


Timestream

by squadrickchestopher



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, BAMF Clint Barton, Captivity, Ceiling Vent Clint Barton, Child Death, Clint Barton Feels, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Clint Barton-centric, Cutting, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dubious Consent, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Gaslighting, Gradual Recovery, HYDRA Trash Party, Heavy Angst, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt/Comfort, Isolation, M/M, Mind Games, Minor Character Death, Paralysis, Physical Abuse, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Punishment, Rape/Non-con Elements, Self-Harm, Sensory Deprivation, Solitary Confinement, Stockholm Syndrome, Time Travel, Torture, Training, Victim Blaming, Whipping, Whump, sucidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2020-06-25 09:01:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 57
Words: 149,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19742431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squadrickchestopher/pseuds/squadrickchestopher
Summary: Except he doesn’t intend to break. He’s Clint Motherfucking Barton, Archer Extraordinaire, SHIELD Agent, Avenger. He’s not going to break under some measly torture.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> First Avengers fic, here we go! Set a year or so after the events of Endgame, so spoilers be warned. Tags will be added as I go along. Please don't hesitate to comment if I've forgotten anything!

“I have a surprise for you, Mikhail.”

Mikhail looks up from his desk, pen faltering in his hand. His boss is standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame. “Surprise?” he repeats, closing the report he’s been working on. “What kind of a surprise?”

“One you will like.” Lukas smiles at him. The effect is less than calming. “Walk with me, please.”

Mikhail closes the report and places it in his desk drawer, then locks it. He stands and stretches, popping the vertebrae in his back. He’s been sitting for far too long. _Fucking KGB and their fucking reports._

He locks the office door, then follows Lukas down the hallway. There’s minimal lighting and the walls are damp, a testament to the location of the underwater HYDRA base. He can feel the wetness in every breath.

“Where did this surprise come from?” he asks, trying to probe Lukas for information. He knows the man well, but he can be hard to read sometimes. Mikhial has no idea if the surprise is a reward or a firing squad.

But he doesn’t think he has made any mistakes recently. In fact, he’d gotten a commendation letter three days ago from Serov, three lines of command above him, for his “exemplary performance in recent weeks.” Really, all he’d done was convince a mid-level American CIA agent to give up a few important bits of information, but if they wanted to commend him he wasn’t going to complain.

“From Murmansk,” Lukas says, and Mikhail raises an eyebrow in question. “K-56 found it.”

 _K-56?_ Mikhail racks his mind, thinking of the submarines he knows about. “I am unfamiliar with that designation,” he finally admits, but Lukas just waves a hand.

“The sub is not important,” he says. “But you will like what it found.”

He leads Mikhail down several hallways, slowly descending the sloped floors to the bottom of the base. It’s even wetter down here. Condensation is sliding down the walls.

Lukas finally stops at a nondescript door and turns to face him. “I will tell you this straight, Mikhail. This is both a test and a reward. We want to see what you do with him.”

“Him?”

The door swings open. In true HYDRA fashion, the room contains nothing more than a chair, a single lightbulb, and a naked man. He is strapped to the chair, his nose bloody, his eyes slitted with suspicion and anger. His dark hair is shaved on the sides and spiked longer in the middle, giving him the appearance of being younger than he probably is. Bruises litter almost every inch of his open skin, most likely courtesy of Lukas’s men. They do like to make an impression.

“About fucking time,” he says in English. “Are you the party I was promised? Because it’s fucking boring in here. I could use some entertainment.”

“He is an American SHIELD agent,” Lukas says, and Mikhail feels his interest peak. “He’s been here for a day and a half.” He crosses his arms and smirks. “We want you to break him.”

The agent twitches, a movement so minute that Mikhail almost thinks he imagines it. Lukas closes the door.

Only years of training keeps Mikhail’s emotions hidden. “Break him?”

“Yes. Break him. When you are done, we want a loyal HYDRA agent.” Lukas tilts his head. “You have done well, Mikhail. Not just with the American CIA man. Your recent service record has been above and beyond what we asked.”

“I’m glad to have been of service,” Mikhail says, his mind spinning. “What’s his name?”

“He said it was John Smith, but we suspect he is lying. That’s your first task.” Lukas hands him the key. “Take all the time and resources you need. I will expect progress reports.”

_Translation: have fun, but remember you are being watched. Remember we expect results._

Mikhail takes the key. “Hail HYDRA,” he says.

“Hail HYDRA.” Lukas turns and walks past him, up the hall, and out of sight.

Mikhail leans against the wall, turning the key over in his hand. _Break him._

Well. It’s more interesting than writing reports.

He opens the door again and steps in. The agent tracks his movements with sharp, wary eyes. “Who the hell are you?” he rasps.

“I could ask you the same thing,” he says in Russian. “What is your name?” He dismisses the John Smith moniker instantly as the lie it is.

The man tilts his head in a perfect image of confusion. “I don’t speak Russian,” he says in a bored voice. Like he’s made the excuse a thousand times before.

“I think you do,” Mikhail says, thinking of his earlier reaction. “You are perhaps not fluent, but I suspect you know more than you let on.”

He lets his fingers trail across the agent’s neck, into his hair, down his bare chest, down towards his unprotected cock. The agent tenses, but Mikhail doesn’t linger. He’s just touching. Cataloguing. Learning about his surprise. There’s many bruises, an intriguing tattoo, and his right index and middle fingers are taped together in a crude splint. Clearly, he was giving Lukas a hard time on the way over.

“If you tell me your name,” he says, “I will bring you water.”

No response. Just a shudder as the fingertips continue to graze.

“I’m sure you are thirsty.”

Nothing.

“Alright. We will try again tomorrow.”

He leaves without another word, locking the door behind him. Isolation is predictable, but effective. He doesn’t suspect this will take long. Especially if the agent has been here a day and a half already.

When he returns to his office, there is a new computer. It’s large, and bulky, and Mikhail scowls as he sees how much of his desk it takes up. But when he turns it on, a grainy video feed plays of the agent and his cell.

A note from Lukas sits next to the computer. _Have fun._  
  


*******************************

Twenty-four hours later, Mikhail returns to his office and turns on the computer. The agent hasn’t moved, of course, but he’s slumped over in the chair. Mikhail looks closely and determines that yes, his chest is rising. Sleeping, then. Probably trying to conserve energy.

Mikhail takes a glass of water with him this time. He steps into the damp room and stands just out of arms reach of the chair, face neutral, eyes on the half-conscious agent.

“Tell me your name,” he says again in Russian.

The agent twitches, one eye opening to give him a bleary glare.

“It’s just a a name,” Mikhail says soothingly. “It is not a state secret. It will do you no harm to tell me your name.”

Which is true, in their world of lies and truths. It’s not coordinates or locations or highly classified missions. But it will give Mikhail a foothold in the agent’s psyche, and the foothold will be the start of his demise.

He waits.

Finally, the agent shifts a bit, opening his other eye. “Fuck you,” he says thickly, but his gaze is locked on the water.

Mikhail laughs and still in Russian says, “A child’s response. Are you a child?”

No response. The blue-grey eyes don’t move.

“Are you a child?” Mikhail repeats.

For a long moment, he doesn’t think the agent is going answer. He just might be stubborn enough that he would rather pass out than give in. “Alright,” Mikhail eventually says. “We will try again tomorrow.” He turns towards the door.

There’s a noise of dissent to that. Small, and the agent immediately looks irritated with himself, but it’s enough to make Mikhail pause. “Did you want to say something, Agent?”

The agent licks his lips, or tries to, and then croaks, “I’m not a child.”

Triumph floods his heart, making his lips curve in a small smile. He switches to English. “So you do understand me.”

A shrug. Mikhail steps closer. “Are you fluent?”

He doesn’t particularly care—the agent will learn by the time Mikhail is done with him—but it will be nice to have a starting point.

“No.” The agent shifts in the chair, still eyeing the glass. “You gonna make me beg for it?”

“I want your name,” Mikhail says, switching back to Russian.

“No.” He coughs, his dry lungs trying to gasp in air. “I don’t want to.”

Mikhail steps close enough to touch his shoulder. Close enough to make him shudder. Softly, in English he murmurs, “What harm is it to tell me who you are?”

“More than you know,” the agent mutters. Mikhail files the statement away and continues caressing the dry skin under his hand.

“I will give you the water if you tell me your name,” he says. Basic transactions. Carrot and stick. “Or I will leave, and then we can try this again tomorrow.”

Mikhail is not very familiar with SHIELD agents, but he suspects that this one will be tough to break. SHIELD, as a rule, is just as tough of an organization as HYDRA. Their agents just as hard.

He looks forward to the challenge.

He leaves, then. No more words. He walks away and takes the water with him, returning to his office to finish paperwork and watch the grainy video. After several more hours, the agent seems to lean forward, then to the side of his chair. Unconscious, Mikhail is sure, but he goes to check anyway. He’s relieved to hear the shallow breaths when he approaches the chair. If the game goes on for too much longer, medical intervention will be required. No sense letting the man die.

Mikhail rouses the agent and repeats his query, but there is still no answer. Even when he takes a sip of the water himself, the man only clenches his teeth and looks away. _Stubborn to a fault, this one,_ Mikhail thinks. But the stubborn ones are always the most fun.

“Tomorrow then,” he says regretfully, and he steps away towards the door. There’s no noise of dissent this time, just a tortured look on the agent’s face.

Mikhail’s hand is on the door when the agent rasps, “Wait.”

He turns, but doesn’t come closer. “Yes?”

The agent meets his gaze, anger and resignation written all over him. He works his jaw like the words are stuck. Mikhail waits patiently, giving him all the time he needs.

“Clint,” the agent finally spits out, hatred in his voice.

“Clint?” Mikhail keeps his expression neutral. “Clint what?”

“Barton.”

“Clint Barton,” he repeats, and the agent closes his eyes. “It is very nice to meet you, Clint Barton.”

He guides the water glass to the agent’s lips, forcing Clint to drink in small and measured sips. It takes them over ten minutes to finish the glass. When it’s empty, he sets it down by the chair and puts his fingers under Clint’s chin, turning his face up until he meets Mikhail’s gaze. “Well done.”

Clint’s jaw tightens, irritation crossing his face. Mikhail smiles then. Praise and punishment. Basic transactions. The building blocks of obedience. Effective, even if you know and understand what’s happening.

“I will be back with more,” he says.

Clint pulls his face away. Mikhail lets his hand trail over the agent’s shoulder, squeezing once. Then he leaves, that sense of triumph still singing through his veins. Yes. Clint Barton will be a fun one to break.


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When time travel goes wrong

Time travel is beautiful, Clint thinks, as he watches an agent drop into the Quantum Realm. He’s always been a Jules Verne fan, something Natasha loved to tease him about endlessly. But he never imagined it would look like this. It’s so…colorful. So futuristic.

He shakes off the sting of Natasha’s memory and turns to the agent manning the send controls. “Hey Jean.”

“Hawk,” he says. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah.” He puts his pack on, then secures the Time GPS to his hand. “I hate these stupid suits.”

“Standard procedure,” Jean says, pushing a radio across the table to him. “One minute to drop off.”

“Kay.” He climbs up onto the platform and stands in the middle.

“Give me your mission highlights,” says the scientist at the platform. He adjusts his glasses and looks down at his clipboard.

Clint sighs. “1995. New York. Take pictures. Come back.”

It’s an easy mission. SHIELD is trying to make minuscule changes in the past. Not enough to mess with the timeline (the logistics of which Clint still doesn’t really understand) but enough to make their lives easier today. Basically, it amounts to leaving notes and whispering ideas to people. Simple things that won’t push the world too far off course. Clint’s been twice now to 1970, both times to make a suggestion to a certain naval officer.

Now the top brass want to send him back to investigate something. He’s not entirely sure what, but he’s been given a camera, a date and time, and a set of coordinates. He has to photograph a meeting, then come back. They won’t tell him any more than that.

He can’t really blame them. The repercussions of time travel are still not well know, despite what warnings Banner and Stark were able to come up with. The more the agents mess around in time, the more likely it is something bad will happen. Like ripples in a pond, someone explained to him. Throw in a pebble, the ripples won’t matter so much. Throw in a boulder, and you’re bound to make some waves.

So they stay small. Keep information on a need-to-know basis. Whisper ideas. Solve mysteries. Act like a fucking time-traveling Scooby-Doo team.

Clint doesn’t mind, honestly. After the whole Thanos thing, after losing his family…he’s fine with small. He’s had enough _big_ for a lifetime.

“Five seconds,” Jean calls, and Clint shakes the thoughts off. Time to focus.

“Wait,” someone says. The receiving station. Clint spins around. “Wait! Don’t send him! There’s someone coming back!”

“What?” Jean shouts, standing up. “No one is due back until 11:07!”

The ‘returning agent’ alarm sounds. Clint lunges for the side of platform. He’s not entirely sure how all this works, but he knows that sending someone out at the same time that someone is coming back is _very bad not good do not attempt._

He doesn’t make it. Another alarm sounds, joining the cacophony of noises and shouting. The floor drops out from under him.

He falls.

Instinct takes over after a moment, where he draws his arms and legs in from their desperate flail. Luckily, his helmet triggered on the fall, so he’s at least breathing. He looks around, checking out the time tunnel, trying to see if he can find whoever was coming in.

He doesn’t. They find him first.

It’s two of them. The first one slips past him, so quickly it’s a blink-and-you-miss-it moment. The second one isn’t so lucky. Clint collides hard, the impact knocking him off course. He barely has time to shout before his helmet starts to blare with warnings about being on the wrong track, the wrong time.

He can’t do anything. The time suits have minimal navigational capabilities, just enough to pick time tunnels. He can’t reverse. Can’t do anything except keep going forward, and hope he gets spit out soon. Once he lands, he can hit his own return button and go back. They can figure it out then.

Except that would require luck. And Clint Barton is anything but lucky, which becomes exceedingly apparent as the time tunnel suddenly gives way, dropping him into midair.

Over the ocean.

Clint has enough time to mutter, “Aw, fuck,” before he hits the water hard enough to take his breath away. It’s fucking _cold_. He screams a bit, then screams more, because he’s underwater and nobody can hear how high pitched his voice is.

He breaks the surface with a gasp and coughs up seawater, the taste making him retch. It’s cold, it’s cold, _it’s so fucking cold holy shit_. He fumbles the GPS with numb hands, only half sure he’s putting in the correct numbers. Finally he hits the last coordinate, only to have it spark uselessly and die in his hands.

“Goddamnit.” If he survives this, he’s going to have to have a talk with SHIELD about making their shit more waterproof.

He ditches the pack with the camera equipment and lets it sink into the depths without a second thought. Then he slips the GPS into his chest pocket and reaches instead for the emergency return at his shoulder. Two pushes, a pause, then three more, a pause, then one. His own personal return code.

Nothing happens.

Somewhat panicking, Clint tries it again.

Nothing.

He tries again.

Nothing.

“Fuck.” Clint scans his options, but there isn’t anything nearby except grey ocean, grey skies, and dingy-looking icebergs. ”FUCK!”

He’s going to die. He’s going to die in 1995 or whenever the hell he is and his family isn’t going to know, and it’s not fucking fair, he _just_ got them back—

“Come on!” he shouts, slamming the emergency button again. It still doesn’t work.

There’s nothing he can do. The realization makes him sick, but it’s true. He’s in the middle of the ocean, he’s freezing, and there’s not a goddamn thing he can do about it. Clint lets out a scream of frustration at the sky and slams his hand in the water, which doesn’t do much but soak his head and make him colder.

The cold is the biggest problem. He’s kicking and treading water, but the cold is going to kill him in a few minutes if he doesn’t get out of it. Except there’s nowhere to get out. Nowhere to go. There’s just him, and the ocean, and—

There’s a noise behind him, and Clint spins. From behind the chunk of ice, something emerges. Something big.

He stares. A submarine. It’s a fucking surfaced submarine.

Clint takes a second to register that, and then starts swimming towards it. He doesn’t care whose it is, or what’s on it. He needs to get out of this fucking ocean. He can deal with the rest later.

As he gets closer, the hatch opens and a few men emerge. They shout something unintelligible, pointing at him, and then throw a rope over the side. He clutches at it with frozen hands. They pull him aboard foot by agonizing foot.

At the top, they grab his suit and yank him up the rest of the way. Clint lays on the deck, coughing and shaking so hard that he can barely breath. The men grab him and carry him over to a hatch, then lower him down to other crew members.

He’s stripped out of his suit and bundled into blankets in a small room stacked with narrow bunks. A glass of something is shoved into his hand. Brandy, he realizes, sipping at it. Someone else has to steady him as he drinks. The drink warms him like the blankets don’t, but it still takes a long time before the shaking slows to manageable levels.

“Thanks,” he says, clutching the blankets around him. “You guys saved my life.”

The men around him stare, wide-eyed, and Clint looks back at them. Then he notices the uniforms. The instructions on the wall. The language they’re speaking.

“American?” one asks with a thick accent, disbelief in his voice.

“Oh shit,” Clint says more calmly than he really feels. “You’re Russian.”

Yeah. This isn’t New York at all.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And then of course it gets worse, because “Clint Barton” and “lucky” do not go together.

They say something else. Clint speaks some Russian, but not fluently, and not well enough to catch what they’re saying. He hears “American” and what might be the word for “plane.”

He was working on it with Natasha, long before Thanos and The Snap ruined his life. He kept working on it sporadically throughout the five years after, always with the intention to go back to her and practice.

His heart twists painfully and he closes his eyes against the memory of her broken body on the ground at Vormir.

_That should've been me._

He shakes his head hard and returns his attention to the present. “Does anyone speak English?”

They stop chattering and look at him. He tries again in his best Russian. “Does anyone speak English?”

That really gets their attention. “You know Russian?” one asks.

“A little. Not well.” Not well enough to attempt a cover story, anyway.

“Wait for Captain Kruschov,” one of them declares with a heavy accent. Clint nods and wraps the blankets tighter.

He needs to figure out what year it is. That will tell him a lot. From there, he needs to examine his suit. Landing in the water probably didn’t do it any favors. If he can’t fix it, he’ll have to figure out some other way to signal SHIELD. Some message that can be passed through time. Time, date, and coordinates. Nothing life shaking. Shouldn’t diverge the timeline too much.

The crew suddenly parts, making way for a man in a sharp uniform. He stands in the doorway and eyes Clint with an air of authority. His beard is neatly trimmed and dark, framing a thin face with intense brown eyes. “I am Captain Kruschov,” he says. His English is well-spoken and polished, like he went to a fancy school as a kid. “How are you?”

“Better,” Clint says honestly. “Getting a little warmer.”

The captain sits on the bunk across from him and motions his men away. They reluctantly trickle out, casting back looks and whispers. Clint waves to them, then directs his attention to Kruschov. “Thanks for the rescue.”

He crosses his arms, all business and no smiles. “Who are you?”

“John Smith,” Clint says. He’s got the threads of a cover story together, since they already think he came here by plane. Now he needs to sound confident. “I was in a plane with my partner, doing some exercises. An engine blew, we lost control and got off course. When it looked like we were gonna shake apart, he hit my eject button and shot me out of the plane. I managed to activate my chute, but I landed in the ocean.” He looks Kruschov in the eye. “I was about to give up when you guys showed.”

The captain studies him, then says, “You are a very good liar, Mr. Smith.”

“I’m not lying,” Clint lies.

“You are. You know how I know? My men and I have been sitting on the surface for the last twelve hours.” He leans closer. “We heard no planes, saw no parachutes. My top men reported nothing until they heard yelling, and were able to see a man overboard.” Kruschov leans back, triumphant. “So I know you are lying to me. And now I am curious why.”

Well, shit. He’s never had a cover story fall apart on him so fast. Then again, his cover stories are usually SHIELD-issued and not made up from a hypothermic brain. “Uh…”

“Captain,” someone else says. Must be second-in-command, Clint thinks, judging from the uniform. He hands Kruschov something and murmurs a few words in Russian.

The captain turns back to him. “So,” he says, eyes narrowing. “You are SHIELD?”

Clint tries not to flinch. Tries really hard. But his expression must give it away, because Kruschov smiles coldly and stands up. “Yes. I think you are.” He thrusts the Time GPS at Clint, turned over to display the SHIELD logo on the back of it.

 _You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me_ , Clint thinks, staring at the telltale symbol. _Really, guys?_

And then of course it gets worse, because “Clint Barton” and “lucky” do not go together. The captain steps closer and rolls up his sleeve, revealing the HYDRA symbol tattooed on the inside of his wrist. “Hail HYDRA,” he says, dropping his arm.

Clint rolls his eyes. “Bet that makes your undercover work difficult,” he says, because being snarky is his life’s work. “Or do you just always wear long sleeves?”

The slap isn’t unexpected, but it still hurts. “We will be taking you back to port,” Kruschov says. “We are due there in five days. And once in port, you will become property of HYDRA.”

He turns to his second. “Get him some clothes and then restrain him. I don’t want any more surprises on this trip.”

  
************

  
The five days it takes them to get into port are uncomfortable and awkward. Clint spends most of the time trapped in the small room, handcuffed to the bunks. He can sit or stand, but that’s about it. Twice a day he gets a bathroom break, and around midday they send him something barely edible on a plate.

He shares his room with other sailors, but they’re forbidden to speak with him. The most interaction he gets is a few sideways glances and a few short words in Russian when he accidentally gets in someone’s way.

He hates it, this bout of forced inactivity. His fingers itch for his bow. He wants to shoot something. Mostly the captain. He comes in and interrogates Clint once a day, trying to get answers to questions he doesn’t know anything about. The sessions usually end in frustration for the captain and with Clint imagining how he would look with an arrow through the eye. Thank God he dropped the camera, or else the questioning would be even worse.

Between questionings, Clint passes the time planning, then scrapping those plans, then planning again. He’s still not entirely sure what year it is, although he’s got his suspicions he’s some time in the Cold War. Basically, his entire plan involves escaping somehow during the upcoming exchange. There’s not a damn thing he can do on the boat, and if HYDRA gets him there’s going to be even less that he can do.

So his working plan right now is to cause a commotion when they get into port, grab his suit, and then escape in the ensuing chaos. After that, he’ll have to wing it.

Which is fine. He’s good at winging it.

Nobody tells him when they arrive, but he manages to guess based on the sailors and their whispered conversations. Sure enough, the submarine eventually stops vibrating under his feet, and there’s a sense of calm that settles over the boat.

The captain comes down and unhooks Clint, cuffing his hands together in front of him. “Walk,” he orders.

“Gonna be hard to climb ladders with these on,” Clint says.

The remark earns him a cuff to the back of the head. “I said walk.”

“Yeah, I heard you.” He ducks through the open door. Handcuffs won’t hinder him too much, although he’ll have to get them off at some point. Not like he has his bow to shoot right now anyway.

The captain impatiently pushes him up ladders and finally out a hatch into open air. Clint shudders as the chill hits him. They haven’t given him anything other than a shirt, jacket, and pants, none of which are meant for blocking the freezing air around him. He doesn't even have shoes.

“Too cold for you?” the captain asks, smirking. “Typical American.”

“I’m really more of a beach guy,” he shoots back, looking around. Options, options, what are his options?

They’re docked at a long pier. There’s a long ramp leading off the sub, and at the end of the ramp is a group of men in suits standing beside a car. Probably waiting for him. Beyond that, there’s a few low buildings, and in the distance he can faintly see the outlines of a bigger town.

Well, shit. Too far to go on foot, especially without shoes. Maybe he can steal the car? Or get into the buildings here. He’s good at hiding. If he can get out of sight and choose a perch, he’s golden.

Kruschov shoves him hard between his shoulder blades. “Stop scheming, agent.”

“I’m not scheming,” Clint says, catching himself on the railing. “I’m plotting. It’s entirely different.”

“It will amount to nothing.”

“Yeah, well, I’m an optimist.” He watches one of the men say something to the other, then start walking up the ramp. This is probably his chance.

The man is tall, rail-thin, and has pale blond hair that looks almost white. His expression is friendly, but it instantly puts Clint on edge. He looks almost like Loki, with that calculating gaze, and Clint definitely does _not_ have good memories of Loki.

“Captain,” he says, walking aboard. “It is good to see you again. Hail HYDRA.”

“Hail HYDRA,” Kruschov responds. He indicates Clint. “This is SHIELD Agent John Smith.”

“Hi,” Clint says, wiggling his fingers. “Don’t suppose you’re just here to deliver pizzas?” He runs his eyes over the man, looking for guns or any other kind of weapons. God, he wants his bow. He’d fucking take them all down.

The man smiles tightly. “I hear you went for a swim, Agent Smith.”

“Sure did,” Clint drawls, spotting a hip holster. “Very brisk. Highly recommend.”

_Lunge for the agent, take the gun, shoot the captain, hold the new guy hostage, get down the ramp, steal the car._

Well, as far as plans go, it’s not great. But it’s what he’s got. He’s done more with less.

Part one goes swimmingly. Clint doesn’t wait for a lull in the conversation, he just jumps forward. He manages to get his hands on the gun and rips it out of the holster, spinning and ducking, and shoots the captain in the face. The new guy fights a little bit, but Clint has five years of desperate street fighting under his belt, and he easily dodges the blows. “I’m a very good shot,” he says, aiming the gun at the man’s chest, “so you might want to avoid any sudden movements. Tell your guys down there to stop.”

“Yes,” the man muses, looking down at Kruschov’s body. He holds out a hand and waves to the other, halting their frantic run up the ramp. “You are a good shot. Did you mean to get him in the eye?”

“Get the handcuff key,” Clint orders. The man obeys, reaching into the captain’s pockets without a word of protest. “Put it on the ground and back the fuck up.”

“This is foolish,” the man says, slowly stepping backwards. “You are delaying the inevitable.”

“Nothing is inevitable.” Clint picks up the key, not taking his eyes off the man. “Come on. We’re going.”

He walks his prisoner down the ramp. “Tell them to back up. 200 yards.” He’s not taking any chances.

The man doesn’t. Instead, he turns around to face Clint. He still has that skin-crawling friendly expression. “I will give you one more chance, Agent Smith.”

“I’m the one with the gun, asshole. If anyone’s giving chances around here, it’s me.”

“You might think that. But having a gun does not necessarily mean you have power.”

Clint shoots the planks right at the man’s feet, then raises the gun back up. “Warning shot. Tell them to move, or the next one goes in your leg.”

“Put the gun down, Agent.”

“Fuck you.”

The man sighs. “Alright. You brought this on yourself.”

He moves. He moves fast. Clint barely has time to react before the man tackles him, forcing the gun straight up. They grapple for a second, the man getting a hand around Clint’s neck, but Clint quickly recovers and kicks him away. “ _You_ brought this on _yourself_ ,” he says, aiming and pulling the trigger.

But the trigger doesn’t pull.

He looks at the gun, confused. As he does so, his fingers open of their own accord and the gun slowly slides out of them, then clatters onto the ground. The handcuff key follows.

“Thank you,” the man says, picking them up.

Clint slowly drops to one knee, then tumbles forward face-first, barely able to catch himself. He’s not unconscious, but his muscles aren’t responding to his frantic commands. He stares at the ground underneath him and desperately tries to move something, _anything_.

The man kneels next to him, gently rolling him over. “I’m sure you are wondering what is happening,” he says calmly.

Clint blinks at him, the only movement that he can make. The panic is building now, and he’s barely able to take in air fast enough to compensate for it. _Not good, not good, this is so very not good._

“Our labs recently created this.” He displays something in his palm. It’s a small case, no bigger than a lighter, with two small indentations in it. In one of them there’s a small flesh-colored square. Almost like a band-aid. “It’s an unusual compound. I will admit that I am not entirely familiar with its nuances. All I know is that when it makes contact with skin, it releases a chemical that inhibits your brain’s response to your muscle movement.”

He reaches out and runs his hand through Clint’s hair, then winds his fingers in it and yanks hard. Clint grunts as his head is pulled up uncomfortably high. “How does it feel, Agent? How does it feel to be so helpless? So completely at my mercy?”

 _Sucks ass_ , is what he wants to say, but he can’t make his mouth work properly. It takes all his concentration just to focus on breathing. The man lets his head drop, hard enough to crack on the planks beneath him, and stands up. He gives them orders in Russian and all Clint can do is internally rage as they pick him up, carry him down the ramp, and deposit him in the trunk of the car.

He lays there, in the uncomfortable position they dropped him in, and wonders why his life is just so goddamn shitty sometimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feel free to comment, I love hearing from readers!


	4. Chapter 3

By the time they reach their destination, most of his movement has returned to him. He prepares himself for the trunk to open, and lunges out as soon as it does. It’s immediately apparent, though, that while his gross motor commands are intact, his coordination isn’t. It’s almost laughably easy for the five agents to subdue him. 

“That was also foolish,” the man says. Clint turns his head from his position on the ground, but all he can see is a pair of shined shoes. “What did you expect was going to happen, you stupid boy?”

“I think it was pretty clear,” Clint snaps, trying to pull his arms back from where another agent has them stretched out in front of him. “And you’re the stupid one if you thought I was coming out of there without a fight.”

“I expected nothing less. But you could have surprised me.” He nudges Clint with his foot. “Let him up, gentlemen.”

They do, albeit reluctantly, and still with a tight hold on him. One of them jams a gun in his back. Clint scowls, taking the time to glance around. They’re in some concrete bunker, almost like a garage. He can see the larger door they must have come in. There’s no other cars, no other people. Just a wide empty space with a door to outside, and another smaller door that must lead into wherever the hell they are. If he can get free and avoid being stuck with one of those patch things again—

“You have two choices,” the man says, drawing his attention back to the problem at hand. “And I am generous for giving you this much. Thank me for this.”

“You fucking serious?”

That earns him a punch to the stomach. He coughs and straightens back up. “I am,” the man says. “You and I will not have long together, but I will teach you to be respectful.”

“I’m not thanking you for shit.”

Another hit, then one to his face, making him bite his cheek. He spits the mouthful of blood onto the man’s shined shoes and grins at him with bloody teeth. “I can do this all day,” he says, channeling his inner Cap. 

They hit him again, and again, and again. Clint takes each blow with gritted teeth, unable to move to avoid them. When they finally stop, he stays hunched over, half slumped down to his knees, unwilling to straighten up lest they hit him again.

The man grabs his chin and raises it until their eyes meet. “Stupid,” he sighs, shaking his head. 

_Yeah, I’m the fucking poster boy for it._

“Hold his wrists,” the man says. “Open his hands.” He grips Clint’s left index finger in his own, then looks at him. “One more chance, Agent.”

Clint looks at his hands, then back up at the man’s face. Then back at his fingers. The instinct to fight, to run, to _hide_ , is so strong that he nearly buckles under the weight of it. He isn’t supposed to be here. Isn’t supposed to be dealing with this. He wants to grab a gun, put a bullet in everyone’s head, and then get the hell out of here.

He forces himself to breathe, then closes his eyes. _Pick your battles, Clint_ , he hears Natasha say in a past life. _Not everything has to be a fight._

“Thank you,” he says. It’s quiet, and he hates himself, but he says it. 

The man smiles triumphantly. Then he breaks Clint’s finger anyway. 

The pain is instant, making him choke and lean forward. “You fucking asshole,” he hisses, trying to pull his arms in closer to himself. “I said what you wanted!”

“Yes, you did. Next time, don’t make me wait.” The man lets go of his hands. “Your choices are this. I can apply my second patch to you, and we can carry you the rest of the way inside. This will likely make my men here very angry with you, and I might not be able to control their actions once we get inside. Or you can walk. This will require some cooperation from you, which I can see you are not very good at. However, I promise that if you go under your own power, we will reach our destination without any further injury to you.”

“I’ll walk,” he says without hesitation. He’s very tempted to say fuck it and make them carry him, but the idea of not being in control of himself while in enemy territory is vaguely horrifying. Walking in willingly will feel like putting his own head in the noose, but he might have a shot at escaping then. 

“Then let’s go,” the man says, and he leads the way through the smaller door. “I suggest you behave yourself along the way.”

“I make no promises,” Clint says, carefully stepping after him.

It’s some sort of base, possibly underwater judging by the dampness on the walls. It reminds him of an old SHIELD base he was stationed at when he first joined up. Industrial hallways with poor lighting and creepy echoes. 

Clint eyes the man’s gun, blatantly displayed on his hip. He could grab that. The man correctly guessed that he’s left-handed, but he shoots just as well with his right. A broken finger won’t stop him. 

The gun in his back might, but he’s willing to take that chance. It’s starting to settle in now, the idea that if he doesn’t get his shit together and make an actual attempt to escape, he’s going to be stuck here. And while’s he’s not concerned about Laura and his kids missing him—he can always return to a few seconds after leaving the first time—he _is_ concerned that he’s going to suddenly be five years older again, like after Thanos, and that isn’t fair to her. They promised to grow old together, not in years-long intervals between time traveling. 

So he goes for it. He grabs the gun, pulls it free from the holster, turns and fires.

Except it doesn’t fire. It just clicks. There’s no bullets in the gun.

“Fuck,” Clint says, which is all he gets out before the four descend on him. He strikes back as best as he can, channeling every ounce of desperation he feels. But his muscles are still not entirely cooperative, and his reflexes are too slow. It takes all five of them, but they eventually put him on the ground. One of them sits on Clint’s back, making all the air rush out of him. 

“I told you to behave yourself,” the man says, turning Clint’s face to the side with his shoe. 

“And I told you I make no promises,” Clint snarls back. He bucks up, but whoever is sitting on him is heavy and doesn’t budge. “It was _right there,_ did you really think I wasn’t going to go for it?”

“Of course I knew you would. Why do you think there weren’t any bullets?” 

Goddamnit. “Well, fuck you too.”

They pull him back to his feet, and predictably, stick another one of those patches on him. He goes limp in their grasp as they drag him the rest of the way to wherever the hell they’re going. 

It’s a cell of some kind, with a chair and a lightbulb hanging over it. Clint fights the urge to laugh at the stereotypical interrogation setup as they drop him on the floor inside. “Take his clothes,” the man says, and they quickly strip him. The vulnerability bothers him more than the blatant display of his body. 

“Put him in the chair when you’re done,” the man says.

 _When you’re done?_ Clint turns his head as much as he can, trying not to show the sudden fear coursing through him. 

“I did warn you,” he says to Clint, “that if you made them carry you, I would not be responsible for their actions.” He turns on his heels and walks towards the door. “Try not to break him too much,” he says over his shoulder.

The door closes. The four men left turn and smile at each other, then look down at Clint. “Let’s see how tough you are,” one of them says, cracking his knuckles. 

“Fuck…off,” Clint forces out, and closes his eyes as a foot swings at his ribs.


	5. Chapter 4

He is so thirsty. He hasn’t had anything to drink since that last day on the sub. He’s not even sure how long ago that was, honestly. He lost some time after they beat him into unconsciousness and strapped him into the chair.

He’s hungry too, but really it’s the thirst that’s getting to him. Most likely they didn’t put him here to die, so he has to assume someone is going to come check on him soon. The question is, are they going to give him water? Or are they going to make him give up information for it?

Probably the second one. Clint can’t tell them about the time travel, obviously, and they’d never believe it anyway. He does need to come up with a plausible story about why he was in the ocean, but he can probably make something up about SHIELD flying reconnaissance missions.

He’s making up a story when the door finally creaks open, revealing the blond asshole from the sub, and another man. The second one has dark hair, a neat suit, and an inquisitive gaze that fixes on him as soon as the door is wide enough.

“About fucking time,” Clint rasps through his dry throat. “Are you the party I was promised? Because it’s fucking boring in here. I could use some entertainment.”

The blond asshole says something in Russian. Clint listens closely, catching, “SHIELD agent” and “day” and “break.” He flinches at that last one, as much as he tries not to. The new guy tilts his head almost imperceptibly, and Clint hopes to whatever gods are out there that he didn’t notice. The less they think he understands, the more they’ll talk around him. Underestimation is one of his favorite tools.

The door closes again, and Clint shifts uncomfortably in the chair. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen, but there’s some sort of shift occurring. Some exchange of power. He’s being handed off.

Sure enough, a few minutes later the door opens again. Clint scowls at the new guy as he walks in and inspects him from head to toe. “Who the hell are you?”

The man answers him in Russian. Clint misses the first part, but recognizes the second question. “What is your name?”

“I don’t speak Russian,” Clint says, trying to sound uninterested in what’s going on. Trying not to betray his nerves.

There’s an answer that he doesn’t understand, and then the new agent starts touching him. Gentle fingertips trail across his shoulders, down his chest, over his stomach, and way too close to his dick for comfort. He tenses, but the touch doesn’t turn _interested_. It’s almost medical in nature. Like he’s cataloguing the bumps and bruises. Learning the subtle reactions of the muscles and skin under his touch.

He murmurs a few other things while touching Clint, but he doesn’t understand and doesn’t respond. Eventually, he draws his hand back, pats Clint on the shoulder, and leaves.

Clint falls asleep sometime after that, an uneasy rest that doesn’t do much for him other than leave him more tired when he finally wakes up. His mouth is even drier, and every breath is like razor blades in his throat. Even his eyelids feel gritty.

The door opens again. “Tell me your name,” the man says in Russian. Clint blinks one eye open and gives him a weary look. Then he sees the glass of water. There’s a drop of condensation on the side of it, running down towards his fingertips, and all Clint can think about is having that water on his tongue, in his mouth, running down his throat. He’s never wanted anything so badly in his entire life.

The agent says something else. He doesn’t move, just stands there and holds the water. “Fuck you,” Clint manages to croak through his dry throat. He doesn’t know what the guy wants, but it seems like an appropriate response.

The agent laughs. “Are you a child?”

The words drop him into a memory. Natasha, laughing at him from across a SHIELD cafeteria table as he steals her chocolate milk again. _You’re such a child,_ she says, first in Russian and then in English. _Give it back, Hawkeye._

_You want it? Come and take it, Widow._

Easy banter, sincere laughter. A lifetime before Avengers, and Thanos, and Vormir. He suddenly misses it so much that it makes his heart ache.

“Are you a child?” the man asks again, and Clint takes a moment to pull himself out of the memory. They stare at each other, captive and captor, and wait to see who will blink first.

“Tomorrow,” the man says, turning to leave.

Clint watches the water go. A small noise escapes him, one that instantly makes him irritated with himself. But it makes the man turn around and ask him something.

Clint licks his lips, which doesn’t really do anything, and says, “I’m not a child.”

The man grins at him and in English says, “So you do understand me.” Clint shrugs. “Are you fluent?”

“No.” He stares at the water some more, then asks, “Are you gonna make me beg for it?”

“Your name,” the man says, switching back to Russian.

Clint tries to draw in a deep breath, which ends up just making him cough hard. “No, I don’t want to.” God, he does sound like a child. Sounds like Cooper when Laura tries to make him eat vegetables.

He pushes away thoughts of his family as the agent touches his shoulder and in English says, “What harm is it to tell me who you are?”

He thinks about the timeline, how fragile his future really is. “More than you know.”

The agent keeps caressing his shoulder, a touch both threatening and yet comforting at the same time. “I will give you the water if you tell me your name. Or I will leave, and then we can try this again tomorrow.”

Clint clenches his jaw, fighting the battle between giving in and maintaining his ground. He needs to drink. Desperately. But he also has his pride, which is stupidly winning out over his body’s needs. He’s turning into Stark, honestly.

The man leaves. Clint watches the door close, watches the water glass disappears, and wonders if it was worth it. The thirst is all-consuming, screaming at him, begging for something to quench it.

He doesn’t remember passing out, but he comes to with a few slaps from the dark-haired man. “Name,” he says again in Russian, and Clint can only clench his teeth against the nausea that threatens to build in him. He needs the water. He _needs_ it.

“Tomorrow then,” the man says, regret in his voice, and he steps away towards the door. Clint stiffens in his chair. He can’t let him go. He’s going to die. He has to drink.

“Wait,” he rasps out, barely able to speak beyond the dryness in his throat.

The man pauses, then turns. “Yes?”

It takes him a second to actually get the words out. He debates giving a fake name for a second, but he can’t think of any that sounds reasonable, and he’s not entirely sure he’s going to remember it anyway. “Clint.”

“Clint?” There’s no change in his expression. “Clint what?”

“Barton.”

“Clint Barton,” the man repeats, and Clint closes his eyes in defeat. “It is very nice to meet you, Clint Barton.”

He lifts the glass to Clint’s lips and helps him drink in small sips. As much as Clint wants to grab the glass and drink it all in one shot, he knows this is the safer way to go. Still, he resents the measured gulps. Resents the man’s gentle touch in his hair even more.

Eventually, the glass is gone, and Clint has to stop himself from asking for more. “Well done,” the agent says, and Clint scowls. He’s been on the other side of the interrogation table long enough that he knows what the man is trying to do. Praise good reactions, punish bad ones. Basic conditioning.

Fuck that. He’s not gonna give in to that bullshit.

“I will be back with more,” the agent says, squeezing his shoulder. He leaves Clint to his shame and growing sense of dread as the door closes. This man is dangerous, much like the first one, and he’s going to have to play very carefully if he wants to go home anytime soon.


	6. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint Motherfucking Barton, Archer Extraordinaire, SHIELD Agent, Avenger.
> 
> Or: Clint is a little shit and he totally knows it

The man brings back one more glass of water and an IV pole. He hooks up a bag of saline and gently taps Clint’s right arm, then sticks him with a needle. “I do not suspect it will take many of these,” he says in English. “You seem like a resilient man.”

He gives Clint a swallow of the water, then stands back. “They certainly did a number on you, didn’t they? Lukas’s people.”

Lukas. “That the blond guy and his buddies?”

“Yes.”

He gives him another sip. “What’s your name?” Clint asks. He doesn’t really expect an answer, so he’s surprised when then man actually tells him.

“I am Mikhail.”

Mikhail. Clint turns the name over in his mind, then asks, “What’s the date?”

“It is June. June seventeenth, I believe.”

“What year?”

Mikhail raises an eyebrow. “Did they hit you that hard?”

“Humor me.”

“It’s 1965.” He tilts his head. “Why?”

1965\. _Shit_. Thirty years and half a world away from New York, 1995. How the hell did he get this far off track?

“Why, Barton?” Mikhail repeats, his voice growing darker.

Clint thinks for a moment, then says, “I lost some time once. Wanted to make sure it wasn’t happening again.”

It’s not a lie, not entirely. He lost track of time—of himself, really—in the years after The Snap. Putting on the Ronin costume helped, but he wasn’t really Clint Barton again until he fell to his knees on the time machine, holding a worn baseball glove in one hand. Holding _hope_.

The memories lend his voice emotion, which must convince Mikhail enough to drop the subject. “It sounds like you have an interesting past,” he says, adjusting the IV bag. “I look forward to learning about it.”

Clint tenses at that. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Mikhail doesn’t answer that one right away. Instead, he tapes the IV down in Clint’s arm, then carefully tilts his head and inspects his black eye. “It means,” he says, “that we are going to be spending a lot of time together.”

 _Not if I have anything to say about it,_ Clint thinks, and it must show on his face because Mikhail sighs and steps back. “Barton, I understand that you are a highly trained agent. I have a lot of respect for SHIELD and their people.”

“I’m sure you do,” Clint says, sarcasm dripping from every word.

“But this is going to be a long game, my friend. And you are going to want to set your pace accordingly.”

He pats Clint’s cheek and walks out, leaving the IV in his arm and the glass of water sitting on the floor, annoyingly out of reach.

  
***

  
True to Mikhail’s prediction, it only takes two IVs to pull Clint out of dangerous dehydration status and back to his normal self. He passes the time preparing lies he can tell when they start forcibly interrogating him. He’s not stupid enough to think that Mikhail is nursing him back to health out of the goodness of his own heart. The man is clearly preparing for something else.

Except he doesn’t intend to break. He’s Clint Motherfucking Barton, Archer Extraordinaire, SHIELD Agent, Avenger. He’s not going to break under some measly torture.

Change comes with a wheelchair and a set of handcuffs attached to it. Clint eyes the chair, then looks up at Mikhail as he pushes it through the door. “I’m not sitting in that,” he says flatly.

Mikhail pulls the IV out of his arm, then winds up the tubing and drapes it over the IV. “You will sit in that,” he says. “You have no choice.”

Clint shakes his head. “No way.” He probably shouldn’t start drawing lines so soon, but he really doesn’t like where this is headed, and he _really_ doesn’t want to be wheeled to his doom like an invalid. “I’ll walk. I can walk. I’m good at walking. Been doing it most of my life. I even run sometimes.”

Mikhail snorts. “Lukas described the history of your cooperation together. I do not trust you to walk anywhere, Barton.”

Okay, that’s fair. Regardless, Clint tenses up as he comes closer. He hates being tied down and helpless, hates it more than just about anything, and he’s so sick of sitting in this chair. “You can handcuff me,” he offers.

“You must think I am an idiot,” Mikhail says. He sets the wheelchair at an angle to Clint and reaches for his first restraint. “Look at me, Barton.”

He doesn’t. It’s petty, but he doesn’t care. Mikhail sighs and winds his fingers into Clint’s hair before pulling sharply backwards. “ _Look_ at me,” he hisses. Clint flicks his eyes up to meet Mikhail’s brown ones. “You are going to sit in the chair,” he says. “You will not fight me on this. If you do, I will make what comes next much worse.”

“Fuck you,” Clint growls.

Mikhail just rolls his eyes and quickly undoes the restraint on Clint’s left arm. Without wasting a second, Clint shoots his hand forward and goes for the throat. Mikhail dodges it neatly, sliding his free hand over Clint’s face to block his vision while his other hand goes for the wrist. Clint ducks his head to the side and changes direction, turning his throat grab into a defensive move. He has to keep his hand free, he has to get out of this goddamn chair.

Mikhail’s hand slides around his elbow, then torques. Clint lets out a grunt of pain and pulls back, but Mikhail’s grip is too strong and he pulls hard, yanking Clint’s arm forward and onto the left wheelchair arm. He secures it to the cuff and steps back, not even breathing hard.

Clint is now awkwardly stretched forward, his right hand and feet still bound to the chair, and his left arm forced out to the side. He pulls on the chair, but it doesn’t move. _Well, that went poorly._

“I am going to move your left foot now,” Mikhail announces. “Are you going to kick me?”

Clint thinks for a moment. “Yes.”

He expects a hit, but Mikhail just chuckles a little. “I appreciate your honesty.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the same little case that Lukas had. “We will just use one of these, then. It will make the process easier.”

The sight of the patches makes him shudder, and he turns as much as he can, trying to look up at Mikhail. “Don’t.”

He does, sticking it on the back of Clint’s leg. Clint waits for his entire body to go numb, but it’s only the left leg that stops responding. “It will only disrupt muscles below the level of placement,” Mikhail says, sensing his confusion. “So your upper body will be fine. I would have started with this, but I wanted to give you a chance to behave properly for me.”

“I’m not a toddler,” Clint growls. “I’ll behave however I damn well want to.”

“You certainly sound like a toddler,” Mikhail laughs, pulling his foot away and setting it on the wheelchair footplate. Clint has to scoot forward for it to reach. He wraps a strap around the ankle, loosely enough that Clint will be able to turn it as he’s shifted over. “Are you going to fight me on this side as well?”

“No.”

Mikhail undoes his arm, and as soon as he does, Clint yanks it away from his grasp. He doesn’t go for the throat this time. Instead, he grabs the little container with the patches and throws it with unerring accuracy into the slats of the large wall vent across the room. Then he sets his arm back on the chair and gives his patented ‘what the fuck you gonna do about it’ grin.

Mikhail looks at the wall, then turns and raises an eyebrow. “Impressive aim.”

“I’m cool like that,” Clint says.

“I thought you were not going to fight me?”

“I wasn’t fighting you, asshole. If I was fighting you, I would have aimed for your head.”

Mikhail considers this, then nods. “Fair enough.” He takes Clint’s wrist again and cuffs it to the chair. “Are you still planning on kicking me?”

“Probably.”

That earns him a smirk. “Stubborn. I like it.”

“I live to please.” Clint considers his position, the open way he’s stretched out, and then decides that he’s dealt with worse. “You wanna bother with the rest of this, or do you just want to give up now?"

The fist that smacks his face isn’t entirely unexpected, but it cracks his head back hard enough to make him lose track of time for a few seconds. In that moment, Mikhail forcibly picks him up, drops him heavily in the chair, and secures his other foot.

“Rude,” Clint breathes, spitting blood onto the floor from a split lip. “What did I do to deserve that one, huh?”

Mikhail rolls his eyes and pushes the IV pole out of the way. “Be quiet, Barton.”


	7. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint’s voice fades out as he takes all this in, attention momentarily distracted from what he’s saying. There’s…a lot of things in here to hurt him. Like, a lot of things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry if my Russian is wrong. I am not Russian and I’m basically googling “how to say XYZ” and doing minor research, then copy/pasting because I don’t have a keyboard for it. Corrections welcome from actual speakers. 
> 
> Also, graphic descriptions of torture in this chapter. You have been warned.

Clint spends the first few minutes of his adventure yanking on the handcuffs, both to test the strength of the chair arms and because every rattle gets an irritated puff from Mikhail. After the seventh or eighth try, he clamps a hand on Clint and says, “Stop.”

“Why? Does it annoy you?” He rattles them again. “I can totally see how this would be annoying. It even annoys me, a little bit. But I’ll get over it.” He does it again, and again.

Mikhail doesn’t say anything else. He just resumes pushing. Clint rattles them a few more times, then settles down and observes his surroundings. “So. Do you guys really hate decorations or something?”

No answer. That’s fine, he can talk enough for both of them. “I mean, not like you need to hang paintings or anything. It’s too dark to see them. But I totally bet you could get a painter down here to do a mural on the wall. That would probably work out. You guys have that stupid weird octopus symbol, right? That would look nice with the creepy damp walls. Definitely set up the atmosphere a little bit for sure.”

They roll down a few more hallways. Clint can tell by the floor grade that they’re starting to go up. He doesn’t know if that’s good or bad. Still, he keeps up his monologue about interior decorating and how nice this base would like if they added in just a _few_ extra lights, only enough to illustrate where the walls actually are, and do they want some names because he can recommend some really decent companies—

He pauses after that, remembering suddenly that the decorators he knows won’t be around for another fifty or so years, but Mikhail doesn’t seem to notice. He’s stopped in front of a door that looks suspiciously like a bank vault. “Intense,” Clint comments, as his captor enters a code on the side of it. “Should I be honored you’re so worried about me escaping?”

The door swings open, and Mikhail pushes him in. The room is larger than his last cell. In the corner is a bed—more of a cot, really— and a toilet, both tucked away like an afterthought. The other side has a sawhorse bench—with restraints, even— plus multiple cabinets and shelves. The shelves are full of basic torture implementations—whips, chains, knives—and the cabinets are locked shut. Anchor points are set into the wall, floor, and ceiling at various points. There’s even a fucking water trough in the corner.

Clint’s voice fades out as he takes all this in, attention momentarily distracted from what he’s saying. There’s…a lot of things in here to hurt him. Like, a lot of things.

He doesn’t scare easy, but this…this isn’t good. This is very, _very_ bad.

“Finally, you are silent,” Mikhail says, coming around to his front. “Does the room shock you?”

Clint pulls himself back to the moment. “This shit? No.” He looks around. “You think this is the first time I’ve been interrogated?”

“Hmm. Interrogation is dull.” He kneels in front of Clint and clicks a handcuff around his wrist. “Torture and screaming until you answer questions I do not particularly care about. No, Clint, I am not going to interrogate you.”

He looks Clint in the eye then. He’s still wearing that neutral expression, but Clint’s spent a lot of time with SHIELD, and he knows how to read behind the lines. What he sees makes him uneasy. “What are you gonna do, then?” Clint asks quietly, tensing under the gentle touch of his fingers.

“I am going to shatter you, Clint Barton,” Mikhail promises, just as quietly. He smiles then, cruel and cold and powerful. “I will shatter you and then I will _remake_ you, in my own image.”

Clint swallows hard, clamping down the fear. “Was that supposed to sound romantic?”

“No.”

“Good, because you kind of missed that. By a few miles, actually.”

Mikhail shakes his head. "We are going to stand up now," he says. “As I told you on the way here, if you fight me, I will make what comes next much worse." He reaches for the restraints. "You are already in trouble. I suggest you behave."

Clint tries not to fight. He really does. But as soon as the restraint comes off his right hand, he shoves hard against Mikhail’s chest, pushing himself backwards a few feet. Instantly, he goes for his other hand. If he can get out, this fight is over. 

He runs out of time. Mikhail is on him before he can even brush the buckle with his hand. Clint tries for the other man’s wrist to see if he can get leverage to break it, but Mikhail just neatly slips his hold and slaps Clint across the face. Then he catches the free wrist and cuffs it to the tethered one. “Someday,” he says, grabbing Clint’s chin and turning it back, “you will learn to listen to me.”

“Someday,” Clint gasps back, “I’m going to fucking kill you.”

Mikhail strings him up then, arms above his head until he’s standing on his tiptoes to maintain balance. Then he comes back into Clint’s field of vision, and opens one of the cabinets. Clint can’t really see what’s in it, but he definitely sees what Mikhail pulls out.

It’s a whip. And not the fun BDSM kind either, made with safety and sex in mind. No, this is a nasty, single-tail leather whip that is clearly made to do damage.

“I warned you,” Mikhail says, faux regretfulness in his voice. He uncoils the whip and holds it up for Clint to see, then steps behind him. “Twice over, I made it very clear what would happen if you defied me.”

“Oh, like you didn’t think I was going to try anyway?” Snarky til the end, that’s what his fucking gravestone will say. _Here lies Clint Barton, who couldn’t keep his damn mouth shut._

“I cannot predict the future, Clint. How you behave is always your choice. Your actions, whether good or bad, will always have consequences. You will come to understand this in time.”

The first lash comes. Clint is as relaxed as he can possibly be—it's not his first time being whipped, he _knows_ that tensing will make it worse—but he still has to bite back a grunt of pain as it cuts into his back.

“Here is how this is going to go,” Mikhail says, hitting him again. “Today is about understanding our relationship and establishing boundaries. I will make it very clear what I expect of you, Agent Barton, and you will obey me.”

“In your fucking dreams, asshole,” Clint snarls, which earns him three more hits.

“First,” Mikhail continues, “is that I demand respect at all times. You will refer to me with an appropriate title.”

“Does asshole count?”

The next hit splits the skin open. Blood slowly drips down his back. Clint hisses in a painful breath.

“Set your pace accordingly,” Mikhail reminds him. “Secondly, I also expect obedience. If I give you an order, it should be followed. Disobedience will be met with swift punishment.”

“Am I supposed to be remembering these? Any chance you could write them down?” He’s proud of how his voice doesn’t shake. Despite having to listen to Mikhail drone, he’s getting himself in a solid headspace. Clint Motherfucking Barton, Hawkeye, Snap Survivor, Former Ronin. He can survive anything.

Three more lashes, then four. Some are diagonal, some are horizontal. All of them hurt like a bitch. “Third. You will not lie to me, just as I will not lie to you.”

Clint has to take a few breaths before he has enough air for that one. “I don’t…believe you.”

“You will in time.” Two more hits. “Three simple things, Agent Barton. Easy enough for you to remember. Respect, obedience, honesty. Surely they ask the same things as SHIELD.”

“Well yeah,” Clint says, letting out a deep breath. “Usually without the theatrics, though.”

Ten hits, all in a row. He’s still not screaming, but he’s damn close.

“You are being punished for breaking these rules,” Mikhail tells him. “ I asked for respect, and you chose to debase me with other words. I asked you to behave, and you fought me several times. I asked you for honesty, and you lied to me. So now I will punish you for this. I hope this will the the only time I have to."

_In your fucking dreams, pal._

He hits again. The whip catches on Clint’s leg and curls up, clipping dangerously close to his balls. He makes a choking noise and clenches his teeth hard. “You may scream,” Mikhail tells him, hitting his other side in the same manner. “No one will mind.”

He does after that. He can’t help it. The whip strikes again, and again, and again, never in the same place twice but close enough to sure as hell feel like it. No inch of him is spared—his back, his ass, even down his thighs.

At some point he loses his footing and tips forward, saved only by the cuffs around his wrists holding him up. His shoulders _burn_ as they catch him, his right one nearly dislocating. “Please!” he yells, the word escaping without permission. “Mikhail, please!”

That one gets him a set of particularly vicious strikes, and he screams through all of them. The blood dripping down his back is more severe now. He’s starting to feel the effects.

“Respect,” Mikhail whispers in his ear, making him jump. He hadn’t realized he’d gotten that close. “Do you call your superiors by their names at SHIELD? You will address me with _respect_ , or this will continue.” He steps around to Clint’s front, crosses his arms, and waits.

Clint heaves in some air, trying to speak through the inferno of agony on his back. “Please,” he whispers again, scrambling to find a title that won’t get him hit. “Please _sir._ Please stop.”

“Better,” Mikhail says, wiping away some of his tears. Much to Clint’s relief, he sets the whip down on the floor. “You are learning.”

He picks up something else then. Something long, and thin, the end sparkling with electricity. “But I suspect you are trying to avoid pain. You are not truly sorry for your actions. Not yet.”

He jabs the instrument into Clint’s side, and electricity arcs through him. The involuntary seizing is hell on his back, and he howls, twisting away to avoid touching it again. “Stop!”

“That sounded like an order,” Mikhail says, touching it to his other side. “You are not allowed to give orders, Agent Barton. Only I may do that. Your job is to obey. Respect, obedience, honesty. That is your life now. I will help you remember this."

More touches. More electricity. Clint is just yelling now, not even in tandem with the taps. He yells and sobs and twists to get away but Mikhail is always there, always waiting. The room smells like fear and sweat and burned flesh. Clint fights back the urge to vomit.

Finally, he hangs limp in his bonds, eyes hooded, barely able to support himself. Mikhail sets the stick down and lifts one of his eyelids. “Do not pass out, Agent Barton,” he says, gently stroking Clint’s hair. “We are not finished quite yet.”

“Please,” Clint whispers, struggling to open his eyes. “Please, stop.”

“Not until you give me what I want.”

Clint takes a shuddering breath. “What…what do you want?”

“An apology,” Mikhail says. “I have shown you kindness, and you spat in my face for it.”

 _What kindness?_ screams the rational part of Clint’s brain, but he doesn’t care to argue. “‘M sorry,” he mumbles, raising his eyes to meet Mikhail’s. “Please. I’m sorry.”

“I hear the words,” Mikhail says. He sets down the electric prod and picks up something else. A knife. "But I do not believe the sincerity. Not yet."

Clint shakes his head, but Mikhail just sets the knife against his chest and makes a thin, long slice. Nothing that would normally bother him, but in this condition, with his nerves already so strung out, it feels like absolute hell.

Mikhail makes another, and another, all the while humming to himself. “I’m sorry!” Clint tries again, but the asshole just shakes his head.

“That is not good enough.”

“God, what do you _want_?”

More cuts. Slices along his arms, his chest, his legs, even perilously close to his groin. At one point, he lays the knife right alongside Clint’s dick and looks at it with a calculating gaze. “No, please,” Clint tries again, attempting to step back with uncooperative feet. “Please, I’m sorry, please don’t do that, no, no, I’m sorry!”

Mikhail just sighs and turns the knife so the sharp blade is laid against the sensitive skin. “Last chance, Agent Barton.”

Clint sobs and tries not to move. He’s so dizzy, and so tired and cold, and he just wants to lay down, this isn’t fair, he already gave up his name and his pride and—

It comes to him in a flash, suddenly, and his head snaps up. “Простите!” he shouts. Russian. Mikhail wants him to speak in Russian. “Простите! I’m sorry!”

The knife disappears from his dick, and Clint shudders in relief. Then Mikhail is there, soothing his head again. “Shh,” he murmurs, reaching up to undo the restraints. He catches Clint as he collapses to the floor, shaking and shuddering and whimpering. “I knew you would get there. You have so much potential.”

Clint curls into his arms, hating himself for doing so but unwilling to stop himself. Mikhail gently pulls him up to his feet, and together they stumble over to the bed on the other side of the room. “Down,” Mikhail says, and Clint crawls on to the bed and lies on his stomach.

He’s free for a moment, untethered and mostly unrestrained as Mikhail moves away to get something. _Attack_ , part of him whispers. _He’s not expecting it. Attack him!_

But then he remembers the whip and the electricity and the touch of steel against his cock, and he shivers hard. No. Not now. He can’t take that again. Not right now.

Mikhail’s touch on his back rouses him enough for another chorus of apologizing, but there’s only soothing whispers and touches from the other man. “I am merely cleaning you up,” he murmurs. He wipes off the whip marks and smears something on them that instantly dulls the pain to a manageable level. “I will be back with some antibiotics,” he says, dropping the bloody cloth on the floor and stepping back. “You can rest now, Clint.”

Clint nods, his eyes already closing. Mikhail gently takes his hands, removes the handcuffs, and ties them to each side of the bed, then gently brushes through Clint’s hair again. “Rest,” he says once more, and then the hand is gone. The lights dim and the door bangs shut.

He thinks of his family, then, as he lays there and bleeds silently. Of Laura’s strong arms and stronger will, of Cooper snuggling his teddy bear despite being “too old for baby stuff,” of Lila dragging him downstairs to look at her bullseye target, of Nathaniel learning to say “Dada” before “Mama.”

Is she worried about him? Does it even matter, since he can come back to her so soon? Or is there now a smaller, alternate timeline where he never goes back at all? In some universe, are his kids growing up without a dad?

Tears burn his eyes and he turns his head into the mattress, unwilling to cry in view of the stupidly large camera in the corner. Somehow, he has to get back to them. He has to teach Nathaniel to draw a bow and be there for Lila’s first date and help Cooper improve his catching. He has to hold Laura in his arms one more time.

_Did you even say I love you when you left?_

He says it now, separated by half a world and over fifty years, in the hopes that somehow she’ll hear it anyway. He says it again and again until exhaustion finally claims him and he drifts unwillingly into sleep, trying to dream of home.


	8. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So now what?”
> 
> Mikhail crosses his left ankle over his right knee, adapting an unconcerned posture. “Now? We talk. I want to know you.”

He doesn’t know how long he sleeps, but when he wakes it’s to a haze of pain and a snarl of agony in his back. “Jesus,” he mutters, shoving his face into the bed until the urge to scream passes.

“Good morning, Clint,” Mikhail says, and Clint flinches. He immediately twists his head and finds the other man sitting on a chair across from him, playing with two interlocking pieces of metal. “How are you feeling?”

“Hurts,” he grunts, turning his head back down into the mattress. The movement makes him feel sick. It’s harder to breath this way, but he really doesn’t want to look at Mikhail. He’s annoyed at himself for breaking even that little bit, and he’s more annoyed at the man who brought him to it.

“I suspect it will for a few days.”

Clint snorts at that, unable to stop himself. “A few days? You fucking flayed my back open. This is _weeks_ of recovery, not days. Unless you want to kill me.”

“I do not want to kill you,” Mikhail says, shifting in his chair. He taps Clint’s arm, drawing his attention to the needle there. “And it will be days, not weeks. HYDRA has developed an excellent serum—somewhat similar to the one used on Captain America, I am sure you remember him—and it speeds healing considerably. I will not use it to its fullest extent, or else there was no point in teaching you a lesson, but I would like to get you out of immediate danger.”

Well, that’s probably what’s making him feel sick. Clint snorts again. “If you didn’t want me in immediate danger, you shouldn’t have put me there.”

“I did not put you there. You put yourself there. We discussed this yesterday. Any consequences you earn are always a direct result of your own behavior.”

 _Abusive Relationships 101. Pain is always your fault._ “I don’t believe that. You can’t make me believe that.”

“Believe what you like for now,” Mikhail says. “Look at me, Clint.”

“No thanks.”

Mikhail sighs and slaps an open palm on his back, hard enough to split one of the barely healed marks open. Clint chokes with the pain and clenches his fists, desperately trying not to tense up and make it worse.

“Look at me.”

He does, blinking his tears back. Mikhail shows him his bloody palm, which he then wipes on Clint’s arm. “I gave you three things to remember. Recite them for me.”

“Um.” Clint thinks back to the beginning of the session, before the whip and the electricity and the knife made everything worse. He vaguely recalls being talked at, but he can’t find the specifics in his memory. “I don’t remember.”

Mikhail holds his hand above Clint’s back, and he tenses. “No don’t! I don’t remember!”

“That does not sound like my problem.” He slaps again.

Clint lets out a low whine and shifts in an attempt to get away from the pain. “I don’t remember,” he whispers, shoving his face back into the mattress. “I don’t remember, I don’t remember, I’m sorry.”

“I suppose I will have to reteach the lesson,” Mikhail says, standing. Clint hears the chair move backwards.

He frantically shoves through the memory, trying to get to the words. He _knows_ something was said, he remembers responding, remembers being snippy about it. “Sir!” he shouts, finally dredging something up. “You wanted me to call you sir.”

Which fundamentally he has a problem with, but right now he’ll deal.

“I want you to be respectful,” Mikhail corrects. “But I will accept that. What else?”

“Don’t lie?” He’s not sure about that one, but apparently it’s right. Mikhail pulls his chair forward.

“One more.”

He knows it now. He knows it but he doesn’t want to say it.

Mikhail picks up on his hesitation. In his peripheral vision, Clint sees him step towards towards the other side of the room. Towards the whip. “Follow orders,” he grits out. “You want me to follow orders.” Mikhail waits, and he reluctantly adds, “Sir.”

Mikhail stops, then steps back and sits in the chair. Clint can’t help the sigh of relief.

“Obedience,” Mikhail says. “Respect, honesty, obedience. Say it.”

Clint repeats the words into the mattress, then turns his head to look at his captor. “So now what?”

Mikhail crosses his left ankle over his right knee, adapting an unconcerned posture. “Now? We talk. I want to know you."

“I’m sure you do,” Clint scoffs, tensing despite himself. No matter what Mikhail says, he’s going to be interrogated. Asking him the questions after the beating is just as effective as asking him the questions during it.

The quip earns him another slap, although this one is lighter. It still sends a ricochet of pain down his skin. “Je-sus,” he hisses, breathing through it.

“Do not presume what I want to know,” Mikhail says calmly.

“Don’t assume I’m gonna tell you shit,” Clint shoots back.

He will. He knows that much. Certain things he can’t give up—the Quantum Realm, his family, knowledge of the future—but he can make up SHIELD bases, Agents, and locations. He’s got enough “this is what you tell them in case of interrogation” shit in his head to last a while.

He’s prepping himself to deal with some pain first—Mikhail will never believe him if he gives in right away—when the other man asks, “What is your middle name?”

Okay, on a list of things he was expecting, that was not it. “Huh?”

“What is your middle name?” Mikhail repeats.

“Why the hell—” He’s interrupted by another slap, this one right to the middle of his back. “Ow, what the fuck? It’s Francis, alright?”

“Francis?” Mikhail laughs. “Clint Francis?”

“Clinton, technically,” Clint says. “Makes it sound better.”

“Clinton Francis Barton. Is that a family name?”

He shrugs as much as he can. “I don’t know.”

“You do not know, or you do not want to tell me?”

“I don’t know. They’re dead now anyway.”

“Your family?”

“Yeah.” He thinks about his parents, about Barney— _not_ his other family. Well technically he doesn’t know if Barney’s dead, but he suspects so. Things had gone bad between them long ago. Barney had faked his own death, then gotten mixed up in some nasty things. Then there was the Snap, and after everyone was returned, Clint still didn’t hear a word. It’s not surprising, honestly. Barney was never destined for a long life.

He remembers the year then, and realizes that actually, his parents are probably still alive right now. His dad was born in…1960? 50-something? He has no clue. But at this point in time, they’re almost definitely alive. As little kids, which is a weird thought. Christ, this timeline shit is going to kill him. Or give him a massive headache.

Mikhail is looking at him expectantly, and he realizes he’s missed a question. He winces. “I wasn’t listening. What’d you say?”

“I said tell me about your family.” He doesn’t look angry, at least. “Brothers? Sisters?”

“Brother. He’s dead too.”

“What was his name?”

“Why do you care?” Clint asks, bracing for another hit.

Mikhail obliges, smacking a hand on his right shoulder. The pain overwhelms him for a second, and he has to fight back the yelp that threatens to emerge with it. “Respect and obedience, Clint. Do not question my motives. I said I want to know you. This is reason enough.”

“I just…” He fights the urge to yell in frustration. This isn’t right, this isn’t how it’s all supposed to go. “Just figured you’d ask about other stuff. Sir.”

An eyebrow raises. “Like other SHIELD Agents? Secret codes? I told you I am overly not fond of interrogations, Clint. Useless drivel. Any codes you know will have been changed or set on high alert. I know how SHIELD operates.” He runs his fingers over the trembling skin of Clint’s back, which hurts only a little less than the slaps do. “As for Agents…well, none of them are a problem as of now. And if they become a problem, we will see what you know.”

Well, that’s alarming. He hopes none of them become a problem until he can break out of here.

Mikhail wipes the blood on Clint’s arm again. “I am spending time here with you because I am interested in you, любимец. So answer my questions and do not irritate me.”

Clint puzzles through the language for a second, then asks, “Did you just call me a pet?”

Mikhail laughs. “This also interests me. Tell me where you learned Russian?”

Oh.

_“Sit down,” Natasha announces, stepping into his tiny living quarters._

_“I am sitting down,” he says, not bothering to get up from the bunk. He’s reading a magazine, something about archery, and smirking at all the poor saps who think they’re so damn good at it._

_“No, you’re laying down. Sit at your desk, Clint. I’m going to teach you Russian.”_

_He drops the magazine. “What? Why?”_

_“Because we’ve got a mission to Moscow in two weeks, and I need you to be passable.” She flashes him a grin, and he feels his heart give a traitorous thump. “Or at least, you should know how to ask for the bathroom.”_

_“Donde está el baño,” Clint says in a bored tone, making no move to get up. He grins back at her. “See? All set.”_

_“That’s Spanish, придурок.”_

_“I have no idea what you just said, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t nice.”_

_She points at the desk. “Sit down, and I’ll tell you.”_

“Clint!”

Clint jerks back to the present moment. “A friend taught me,” he says, hoping to cover up the memory. Not a good time to be crying. “A good friend. She, uh…she was Russian. She taught me a little bit. Words and phrases and shit.”

He misses her so goddamn much. She would never have let herself get in this situation. And if she did, she would sure as hell be able to get out of it.

“She must have been a good friend,” Mikhail says. “Was she your wife? Girlfriend?”

No. He’s not going to talk about her. She is locked away in a box with Laura and the kids. He’s not going to give her up to this creep. He did that once, he’s never doing it again.

“My brother’s name was Barney,” he says instead. “Barney Barton. Yes, I’m aware it’s a dumb name. They learned the second time around. Well, sort of. I mean, I still have to deal with Francis, but at least my name doesn’t sound like it should be on a comic book.”

Mikhail, of course, doesn’t let the moment go by. “You do not want to talk about her?”

“I don’t really want to talk about any of this,” Clint snaps.

“I could make you tell me,” Mikhail says, leaning forward. “I could tie you back on the other side of the room and whip you until I know everything about her.” He looks at Clint. “Or you could just tell me. It would be easier for you.”

Yeah, it would. But he’s not going to. Clint gambles a little and says, “If you do that, I’ll probably die. Super-duper magic serum or not.”

There’s a long moment, where they both stare each other down, then Mikhail nods. “Yes. That is probably true.” He drums his fingers on the bed. “I will give you one more chance, Agent Barton.”

“Generous,” Clint says. “Ask a different question, and maybe I’ll answer it. I know a lot about archery, that’s a good place to start. Or guns. Weather patterns. Space. Opera. Shitty pulp fiction novels. Crappy television. I could tell you how to ask for the bathroom in seventeen different languages, including three that no one actually speaks.”

Mikhail gets up and walks out of Clint’s view to open a cabinet. “I was hoping to keep this civilized, Agent Barton,” he calls back. “I would have liked to have a simple conversation with you.”

“So ask me something,” Clint says. “Just not about her.”

Mikhail comes back to Clint’s side, holding something. "It is not up to you to dictate our conversations. No. We will try again some other time. Perhaps when you are feeling more cooperative.”

It’s a needle. It’s a huge fucking needle with some clear liquid, and Clint can’t do much more than protest as Mikhail sticks him right in the ass. “Really?” he asks, twisting as much as his bonds and his back will allow. “That’s just fucking undignified.”

“This is a sedative,” Mikhail says, setting it on the bed next to Clint’s arm. “You will sleep for some time. When you wake up, I would like you to think about what it means to talk to me. You will have plenty of time to do so.”

Clint pulls hard on his restraints just so he can have the feeling of fighting something. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

But Mikhail doesn’t reply, and he can feel the sedative settling over his mind. “No,” he mutters, pulling at them again. “No, no no, no, no.”

As his eyes start to close, Mikhail’s fingers drift over his head, gently tracing the skin. “Think about it,” he murmurs. “I will be ready when you are.”

“ _No_ ,” Clint says again, but it’s too late. He’s gone.

He wakes up alone in complete darkness.


	9. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s not gonna break from this. He once sat in a perch for six days, waiting for a target. If Mikhail thinks a little boredom is going to get him, he’s got another think coming. Clint can handle this. He can handle anything.

The darkness would be suffocating to most people, but he’s Clint Motherfucking Barton, Super Sniper. He’s made his life about hiding in dark places, and this is nothing different.

He explores the new area as best as he can, slowly crawling around with his hands outstretched until he finds a wall, which he then traces around the room. Fifteen steps per wall. He finds what he thinks is the door, but the handle just rattles uselessly when he pulls on it.

Well, he’s not sure what else he expected. The door to open? His team waiting to throw a surprise party? He suddenly pictures the Hulk in a party hat and snorts.

Clint explores the rest of the room in a pattern, hands out so he doesn’t bump into the wall. He finds nothing except a thin scratchy blanket, which he wraps around himself, and bucket bolted into a corner. Must be his bathroom, judging from the smell.

Then he settles down opposite of it and waits. He’s not gonna break from this. He once sat in a perch for six days, waiting for a target. If Mikhail thinks a little boredom is going to get him, he’s got another think coming. Clint slips into his usual meditative state, slowing his breathing and calming himself. He can handle this. He can handle anything.

Sometime later, a rattling by the door pulls him out of it. He jumps to his feet, but the door doesn’t actually open. Something is pushed into the room instead through a slat near the bottom.

Clint carefully steps over and runs his hands over the door, feeling the notches and lines set into it. Yes, there’s an indentation down at the bottom. No way to open it on this side, but it’s something at least.

He pats his hands around on the floor. There’s a water bottle, and something next to it. Something soft and spongy. Bread? He picks it up and sniffs it. Yeah. Bread. Two slices.

“Really?” he calls out. “Bread and water? That’s the kind of vibe we’re going for?”

No answer, just the echoing of his own question.

He contemplates not eating to make a point, but he’s hungry and he needs the calories. So he eats the bread and drinks half the water before taking the rest back to his corner.

So they’re planning on keeping him alive, at least. They’re feeding him. Not enough, but something.

_I would like you to think about what it means to talk to me._

Too bad, asshole. He’s not going to win on this one. Clint Motherfucking Barton, Avenging Badass is not going to give in. Not on this. Mikhail doesn’t get to hear about Natasha. He isn't worthy to know her name.

***

Hours pass. Clint works out as much as he can without aggravating his back. He doesn’t want to burn too many calories, but if he just lays here he’s going to waste away a lot quicker.

He sings. He remembers way too much Taylor Swift— _thanks, Lila_ —but after awhile he branches out to some classic rock. Queen, AC/DC, Scorpion, Meatloaf. He doesn’t really care if they’re period correct or not. Maybe in ten years one of the HYDRA agents monitoring him will hear a song and think of their psychic prisoner who sang it way before it was made.

Clint giggles about this for a bit, then wonders he can technically still call it classic rock since he’s _in_ 1965\. Wouldn’t that make it just…rock?

“Get out of your head,” he tells himself, just to hear something in the darkness.

***

He imagines the team coming to rescue him. All of them, alive and together again. Hulk would smash the doors, Thor would pull lightning down on those fucking HYDRA goons that beat him the first time. Cap would use Mjölnir and his shield and lead the charge in. Stark would be the one to burst down the door with a repulsor blast and a cheesy one-liner that would have Clint rolling his eyes for days.

Natasha would take Mikhail. He’d never see her coming. She’d snap his neck in the dark without a whisper, and he’d never know. It’s better than he deserves.

***

He reenacts battles in his head and in the cell, rolling and dodging and pulling his imaginary bow. He makes up some too, imagining himself pulling the string and putting an arrow into Loki’s eye before that fucking scepter could touch him. The image makes him smile through his cracked lips.

***

They don’t feed him on a schedule. Sometimes he gets deliveries within hours of each other, sometimes they make him wait until his stomach is almost twisting in on itself. The food varies, but it’s never enough to chase away the hunger that sits constant in his gut. The water is only enough to keep him alive, nothing more. They don’t even let him keep the bottle. He has to put it by the slat when he’s done, something that took several thirsty days to figure out.

Clint _knows_ the weird timing is designed to mess with him, but that doesn’t stop it from working. His only good measure of time is his hair, which was shaved bare on the sides and is now slowly starting to get bristly. The whip marks are now too healed to be useful.

He meant to grow it all out once he got Laura and the kids back. The mohawk reminded him too much of being Ronin, every time he looked in the mirror, and he hated it. When he mentioned this to Laura, she’d looked vaguely disappointed.

“You don’t want me to?” he’d asked while brushing his teeth.

“It’s your hair,” she’d said, rolling over in bed to meet his gaze. “And I know you don’t like being reminded of that time.”

“So why the face?”

She blushed then, a beautiful light red that flushed her face down to her breasts and turned him on instantly. “It’s kind of hot,” she whispered, gesturing to the shaved part of it. “And with the tattoo? You look very badass.”

“I’ve always been a badass,” he whispered back, climbing back into bed and kissing her.

“Yeah, but now you look it.”

He’d laughed and pulled the sheets over them. They’d made love slowly, reveling in the miracle of having each other. Of being _together_ , after five years of nothing but dreams and memories.

His heart twists in longing then, and he forces himself to think of something else.

***

It’s been fifteen “meals.” Clint doesn’t know what that means, or how long that indicates. It’s probably been at least a week? He’s started hallucinating, or maybe it’s just dreams. But they’re not ones he’s actively making up. He hears his kids the most, calling his name or laughing. But when he turns, there’s nothing but darkness.

He talks to himself to chase away the oppressive blackness. He’s sure they’re listening to him, but he can’t stop himself. The need to hear _something_ is overwhelming. Poetry, every shitty safe house novel he’s ever read, all the movies he’s ever seen. It comes spilling out of him until his voice is raw.

***

Clint wakes up once with his hands aching. At first he thinks it’s his broken finger, still in its makeshift splint. Later, he realizes that his fingernails are rough and worn to nubs. He was scratching the floor in his sleep.

***

He screams sometimes. It doesn’t help.

***

When the slat opens for the twenty-fifth time, Clint is right there next to it. He shoves his hand through, intent on grabbing whoever is putting food in here and demanding some answers.

He doesn’t get the chance. A hand grasps around his wrist instead and sharply twists it. Clint hears the crack before he feels it, instantly drawing his hand back into his chest as the pain slams into him like a tidal wave. A scream bursts from him, a horrible keening sound that takes serious effort to stop. He curls up in front of the door, clutching his throbbing wrist.

They push something else through the slot a few hours later. Bandages and a splint. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he sets his own wrist and binds it as tight as he can. Sometime later, they push in water.

***

He doesn’t get food again for a long time.

***

Sometimes he sees lights in the corner of his eye. He knows that’s his brain trying make up for sensory deprivation, but it doesn’t stop him from flinching every time one appears.

***

The next time he opens his eyes—from sleep or unconsciousness, he can’t remember anymore—Natasha is sitting next to him.

She is dressed exactly how he saw her last. Her usual mission uniform, red hair streaked with blond and tied back in a braid. She’s smiling at him. “Hey, Clint.”

“Nat,” he croaks, or tries to.

“Shhh,” she murmurs, touching his hair. “Clint, it’s okay.”

He coughs through the dryness in his throat and tries to sit up. His wrist is throbbing. “Nat,” he says again, reaching out for her.

She isn’t real. He knows she isn’t. But his fingers touch hair, and soft skin, and the warmth of it is enough to make him sob in relief. “You’re here,” he says, his voice breaking. “You’re here.”

“I’m here,” she confirms, giving him a sad smile. “I miss you, Hawkeye.”

“I miss you too. Oh God, I miss you so much.” He can’t stop touching her face, not until her hand comes up and winds around his. “Why are you here, Nat?”

“You wanted me to be,” she tells him. Like it’s that simple. “You and me, Clint. Isn’t that how it always goes?”

It is. It so is. Laura is the love of his life, but Natasha is the oldest and best friend he’s ever had. It’s always the two of them together. Even when they fight each other, it’s still always them.

“I won’t do it,” he says. “I won’t give you to him. I gave you to Loki, I answered his questions even as I screamed the whole time. I’m not doing that again. I won’t.”

“You didn’t have a choice, love.”

“I can’t let him break me.”

She looks at him. He can see the purple sky of Vormir in her eyes. “You don’t have to break, Clint. You just need to bend a little.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“It’s not.” Natasha brushes a loose strand from her face. “It’s not, Clint. You have to give, or he’s going to ruin you.”

“I can’t do that.” He’s crying now, tears dripping down his face. “You’re family too. You’re just a step from _them_ , and I won’t do that. I won’t give them up. I’ll die first.”

She wraps her arms around him and he curls into her. “So change the story,” she whispers. “Make me the last step. Put them away and keep them safe.”

He just cries into her shoulder while she holds him, a year of grief and longing slipping through him in one single moment. “I forgive you,” she whispers. “Я прощаю тебя. I forgive you.”

Clint doesn’t know if that’s for Vormir, or for Loki, or for what he has to do, but he doesn’t care. He pulls the words around him like armor and stays in her embrace. He’s tired again, but he doesn’t want to sleep. He doesn’t want her to leave.

He whispers stories instead, spinning the memories into the darkness, hoping to keep her just a few seconds longer.

_Remember in Spain, when we had to sit through that thunderstorm together in that shitty little cave?_

_Remember Venice, when we lost our gondola and we had to steal the motorcycle to keep up?_

_Remember San Francisco, when I got stuck on the carnival ride and you had to take a helicopter to come get me?_

_Remember?_

_Remember?_

_Remember?_

He blinks and she’s gone, leaving nothing but cold air where she was before.

***

When he sleeps—if he sleeps—he dreams of being Ronin. Of slashing throats and wielding a sword and the horrible emptiness inside him waiting to consume everything.

He sees their faces, stricken with fear and terror as his sword cuts through them. A sword, not an arrow, because he didn’t deserve to be Hawkeye. _Why us?_ They scream at him. _Why us?_

_Because you survived_ , he says, and then remembers that he did too.

Didn’t he?

***

He lays on the floor, tracing invisible patterns in the air with his good hand, counting the seconds out loud. He loses track after six thousand. He starts over again. Then again. Then again. Then again.

***

Maybe he did die. Maybe this is Hell.

***

He wouldn’t deserve anything less.

***

Laura, Cooper, Lila, Nathaniel. He says their names in his head like a balm against the blackness. Laura Cooper Lila Nathaniel Laura Cooper Lila Nathaniel Laura Cooper Lila Nathaniel Laura Cooper Lila Nathaniel Laura Laura _Laura_ —

“I love you,” he says out loud. “I _love_ you.”

Then he puts them away, and changes the story.

***

Mikhail is standing over him.

The sight is alien, and Clint realizes that there’s a dim light illuminating his cell. He can barely stand to look at it. He has to shade his face to look up at Mikhail.

“M—,” he starts to say, but then he remembers the first lesson. “Sir?”

“Agent Barton,” comes the cold response, and it’s almost painful to finally hear something that’s not his own ragged voice. “Have you had time to think?”

“Yeah,” Clint whispers. His voice cracks. “Yes.”

“Good.” Mikhail doesn’t move, he just stands there and waits patiently. Clint curls up a little tighter, then clenches his fists.

“Tell me about her.” There’s a beat of silence, where Clint tries to decide what to do. “Talk to me, Agent Barton, or I will give you more time.”

He can’t bear to be alone anymore, he can’t do it. He grabs Mikhail’s hand with his good one and clutches it desperately. “Please. Please don’t go.”

Mikhail pauses for a lifetime, then slowly kneels down next to Clint’s trembling body. “Tell me about her,” he says softly, gently rubbing a thumb over Clint’s knuckles, “and I will stay.”

Clint opens his mouth, then closes it. He doesn’t want to, _he doesn’t want to_ , it’s like spilling his secrets to Loki all over again while he raged and screamed inside.

But if he doesn’t…Jesus Christ, he’s gonna break. He’s going to shatter so hard he won’t be able to fix the broken pieces this time. He can’t do this again. Can’t lose himself in the darkness, not like after The Snap. The worst five years of his life, he was so lost and there was so much death and so much _blood_ …

“Shhh,” Mikhail says, pulling him into an embrace. Clint sinks into it, touching whatever skin he can find. “Just her name, Agent Barton. Tell me her name and I will take you out of here.”

Clint lets out a horrible, animal sobbing noise, and makes his choice. “Natasha.”

For the longest moment, there’s no reply. _Oh God, he thinks I’m lying, he thinks I’m lying, he’s going to put me back in there, I’m sorry Nat I’m sorry I couldn’t keep you—_

“Good boy.” There’s a cool press of lips to his heated forehead, and the relief that sweeps through him is bone-deep and exhausting . “You may rest now.”

He fists his hands in Mikhail’s shirt. “Don’t leave me,” he begs. “Please. Please stay.”

“I will stay,” the quiet reassurance comes. Clint sobs and burrows into him, pressing his ear against the steady thumping of Mikhail’s heartbeat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was exhausting to write. Poor little baby bird. :(


	10. Chapter 9

They have to blindfold him before they can take him out, which freaks Clint out almost as much as being left in the room. Someone else hands in a roll of gauze and Mikhail is the one who wraps it around his head. “Easy, любимец,” he says, his lips almost brushing Clint’s ear. “We merely want to keep your vision intact.”

Vision. Right. He’s a sniper. As desperately as he wants to see again, he needs to be smart about it. He’s been in darkness for a long time. Slow exposure is the way to go. “Okay,” he whispers, fighting every instinct to rip it off. Mikhail ties it off and he raises a few fingers to touch it, but leaves it in place.

“Stand up, Clint,” Mikhail orders. “I will help you out of here, but I need you to stand.”

He shakily puts one hand on the ground and one on the wall, then pushes himself up. Mikhail makes a pleased sound and takes his right wrist—the poorly splinted, broken one. “Come. We will get you medicine.”

“Okay.”

They put him in the wheelchair again, but they don’t restrain him. No point. Literally nothing about him is ready for an escape right now.

Mikhail takes a moment to wrap the blanket over him, and Clint is disturbingly grateful for this. There’s a tiny, rational part of his brain that screams he has nothing to be grateful for, that Mikhail is the one who locked him in there, but he ignores it. He’ll take kindness where it comes, thank you very much.

The wheelchair starts moving and Clint jumps. “Easy,” Mikhail murmurs. “Easy, Clint. You are safe now.”

“Okay.” Safe. He’s not safe. He’s never been less safe in his life.

“Just relax.”

He clenches and unclenches his hands on the wheelchair arms before finally getting up the courage to ask, “How long?”

He’s not sure if he does or doesn’t want to know the answer, but Mikhail doesn’t give it to him anyway. “All will be discussed later.”

Clint takes that for the dismissal it is. He pulls his knees into his chest and buries his head into his knees. He’s sure he looks pathetic—he feels pathetic—but honestly, he doesn’t really care.

They wheel him back to the room, he thinks, because when they stop Mikhail helps him stand up and shuffle onto a bed. “The lights are as dim as I can make them,” he tells Clint. “But I recommend taking the blindfold off in layers.”

“Okay.” Clint pulls off some of it, feeling like a mummy.

He can see a little bit now. Shapes, mostly. Then he jumps again as Mikhail presses a bottle into his hands. “Drink.”

Clint twists it open and takes a swallow. “How long?” he asks again.

“How long do you think it was?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. Two weeks?”

“Five,” Mikhail corrects. He sounds almost…proud? “You are very strong, _ptichka_.”

Clint has no idea what Mikhail just called him, but he’s sure it’s something diminutive. “Oh.”

“I hope it was was long enough.” His voice is light and friendly, but there’s a cold weight behind his words. “Give me your left arm.”

He does, and winces as a needle is stuck into it. “What’s that?”

“Saline and nutrition. You are quite malnourished.”

Well, that’s true. He’s been able to count his ribs for days now. A SHIELD doctor once told him he needed two thousand calories a day, minimum. He’s probably been getting less than five hundred.

Mikhail tapes the IV down and sits on the bed next to him. His arm brushes against Clint’s and traces over the designs on it. The contact is both too much and not enough, but he doesn’t pull away from it. “Tell me about this.”

“It’s a ronin,” Clint says. “Japanese samurai without a master.”

“And what significance does a Japanese samurai have for an American SHIELD agent?”

_“You want a what?”_

_“A ronin. It’s a—”_

_“I know what the fuck it is. Why the hell would you want that?”_

_Clint rolls his eyes and pushes the wad of money across the counter. “Because I do, Airi. Why does it matter?”_

_She shakes her head and pushes it back. “I don’t take your blood money, Barton. You know that.”_

_“Blood money is all I have,” he says, pushing it forward again. “Take it or starve.”_

_Airi scowls. “Come back tomorrow,” she says, snatching up the cash and tucking it into her pocket. “I’ll have a better design for you then.”_

_“I want—”_

_“I heard you, Barton. Come back tomorrow and I’ll have a design that doesn’t look like a toddler drew it.”_

_Clint scowls back, but he knows when he’s beaten. The next day he comes back to the shop and she lays out a design that admittedly looks way more impressive than the one he gave her. A skeletal samurai sitting atop a tree with a serpent wrapped around the base._

_“What’s this part?” he asks, pointing at the bottom._

_“A reminder.” She taps the tree trunk. “If you’re going to be suicidal and announce who you are, then I’m going to give you reminders to keep yourself alive. Because it’s what_ they _would have wanted.”_

_He sees them then. The four faces in the the tree. Too indistinct to truly resemble people, but he knows immediately what they are, and tears flood his eyes. He wipes them away quickly and Airi pretends not to see. “What’s the serpent for?”_

_“Choices,” she says. “Good and bad ones.”_

_He looks at the entire design, then nods. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”_

“It was a reminder,” Clint says. “And a statement.”

“What kind of statement?”

_Come and find me. I’m not hiding._

“That I didn’t have to answer to anyone,” Clint finally says.

Mikhail hums. “What caused this?”

 _A megalomaniac asshole decided that half of all life needed wiping out, so he literally dusted my entire family, along with billions of other life forms, and that drove me a little insane for about five years._ “I lost someone important to me.”

“This someone important…would that be your Natasha?”

He’s glad the blindfold is still on, and that he doesn’t have to hide the pain. “Yes.”

“Were you together?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“A long time. She was my best friend.”

“Tell me,” Mikhail orders.

He does. Not all of it. Not even most of it. He’s always been a good liar, and he learned from the very best. So he spins a new story, sprinkling enough truths to make it consistent. “I was working for SHIELD. Natasha wasn’t. She took down a high-level asset of ours and I was sent to kill her.” Clint remembers sighting her down the edge of his bow, aiming an arrow at the center of her red dress. “I made a different call. I brought her in. We got close.”

“And you married her?”

“Eventually.” They had actually gotten “married” once for an assignment. A fun explanation for Clint the next time he went home.

“Did you have children?”

 _Not with her_. “No. She can’t. She got hurt once. They had to remove her…” He gestures vaguely and Mikhail seems to get it.

“How did you lose her?”

“She sacrificed herself on a mission. To save me.” He pulls the blindfold the rest of the way off, preferring the sting of the light to remembering the smear of blood under her head at Vormir. “I tried to stop her. She wouldn’t let me.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” Mikhail says softly. He rubs his thumb over Clint’s knuckle again. “You could have told me this five weeks ago,” Mikhail says, getting up from the bed. “And saved yourself some trouble.”

Clint snorts quietly. “I’m stubborn like that.”

“Yes, you are. I look forward to working with you some more.”

 _Some more?_ His head snaps up, fear suddenly flooding him. “Don’t put me back there.”

“No, Clint.” Mikhail pats his head like he’s a dog. “That lesson is over, unless we need to revisit it.”

Lessons. Like he’s a schoolboy. _Respect, obedience, honesty. Answer questions when I ask._

Well, he can’t deny that they’re sticking, at least a little.

Mikhail crosses the room and opens a drawer. Clint watches carefully, every muscle tense. But all the other man does is pull out a cuff, similar to the ones Clint had on his wrists before, and a short length of chain. “I do not think I need to tie you down completely,” Mikhail says, coming back over. “But I would be remiss if I let you run entirely free.”

Clint doesn’t argue, just shifts slightly and sticks out his right leg. Mikhail fastens the restraint around his ankle with a secure-looking padlock, which he could totally pick if he felt up to it. “You should sleep,” he says. “I will return later.”

He doesn’t want to sleep. He’s been in the dark for far too long. But he nods and curls onto his side, mindful of the IV and his throbbing wrist, still in its shitty splint.

“I’ll leave the light on,” Mikhail says. Clint feels that absurd gratefulness again and grits his teeth. He is a fucking assassin. He is _not_ afraid of the dark.

He repeats that to himself until he believes it.


	11. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SHIELD agents are making trouble, and Clint needs to find a way out.

Clint puts himself back together little bits at a time over the next several days. Not the same, but close enough. He still flinches at unexpected noises, still half-expects the light to be off every time his eyes reopen. Mikhail is patient with him, telling him the time whenever he asks. His wrist gets reset properly and in a fit of kindness, Mikhail even super serums it for him. The results leave Clint feeling sick and out of sorts for a few days, but in the end his wrist is healed. Some part of him realizes that there are probably some nasty side effects to doing that, but he honestly doesn’t care. A broken wrist isn’t going to help him get out here.

They talk during this off time. Not about SHIELD, or Natasha. Just about life. Little anecdotes that don’t mean anything. Stupid stories from growing up. It surprises him, almost, the things they have in common. Two alcoholic fathers, two weak mothers. Formative years spent stealing and climbing and running away. Mikhail even has a brother, although his is alive and kicking somewhere on a boat in the USSR Navy. He wasn’t in a circus, but he spent time moving around with his military father, so nowhere ever really felt like home to him either. “I have never felt at ease in any place,” Mikhail says, and Clint can sympathize with that. Until Laura— _no don’t think about her put her away she can’t be here_ —he hadn’t either.

Easy conversation. No secrets or lies required. Clint takes the respite with all willingness, uses the time to plan, but he can’t help feeling like the other shoe is about to drop. Mikhail is constantly appraising him, waiting for _something_. He doesn’t know what and he doesn’t like it.

The moment comes with the heart-stopping arrival of a train slamming into a station. Five days after leaving the dark room, something has Mikhail on edge. He hides it well during their chat, but Clint grew up in an abusive home and he knows the signs. Something is happening on the outside.

On the sixth day, the door opens much later than usual. Clint drops to a knee from where he’s doing push-ups—they’re still mostly starving him, but he hates sitting around doing nothing—and catches the thunderous expression on Mikhail’s face. Instantly, he’s catapulted back twenty-five years to that time he woke his dad up on accident, and self-preservation tells him to freeze.

“Agent Barton,” Mikhail says. “We need to talk.”

He’s holding a file in his hand. Two files, actually, and he slams them on a table on the other side of the room.

“I didn’t do anything,” Clint says, still frozen on the floor. _Agent Barton_ is not good, Mikhail only calls him that when he’s in trouble.

“This is not about you,” Mikhail says. “Get up.”

He slowly pushes up to his feet. He’s still naked, he hasn’t had clothes since that first day, but he suddenly _feels_ the vulnerability of it. “I didn’t do anything,” he says again. Like the words are a shield.

“I am going to ask you some questions,” Mikhail says, “and you will answer them honestly. If you do not, there will be consequences. Do you understand me, Agent Barton?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. I would like to keep this civilized. _I_ do not want to hurt you.”

Oh, Clint doesn’t like the emphasis there. Mikhail picks up the files and crosses to his side of the room, then hands them to Clint. “Open.”

He opens them. They’re personnel files, each with a picture attached. One man, one woman. SHIELD agents.

Shit. Agents making trouble.

He opens the woman’s first. She looks a little like Maria Hill. All sharp edges and no nonsense gaze.

There’s a short sentence in English underneath the picture. **Agent Macton. Last known location: Saransk. Priority Level 12. Capture and interrogate.** The name sounds familiar, but he doesn’t recognize her.

The man’s file is the same. He’s bald and big, and Clint actually does recognize the picture. He’s seen it on the Wall of Fallen at SHIELD headquarters at the top of the 1969 column. He pointed it out to Natasha once— _Come on, Nat. What are the odds here?—_ and when she didn’t get it, he made her watch all the movies later. Even the bad ones. **Agent Bond. Last known location: Saransk. Priority Level 12. Capture and interrogate.**

Everything else written there is in Russian, and he can’t read it. He looks up at Mikhail. “What about them?”

Mikhail takes the files. “Do you know them?”

“No.” Clint looks him in the eye. “It’s a big organization, sir. I don’t know everybody.”

There’s a long moment, and then he says, “These two agents stole something from HYDRA. Something very important to us.”

“And you think I had something to do with it because…”

“I do not think you had anything to do with it,” Mikhail says. “But I think you might know something that you are not letting on.” He steps closer, using his half-foot taller height to his advantage. “Tell me. What do you know about Operation Star?”

Well, shit. This he _does_ actually know, and suddenly he realizes why the names are vaguely familiar to him. He remembers learning about this in SHIELD orientation. Macton and Bond went into Moscow, and without any backup, decent weapons, or proper intel, managed to intercept a van carrying an young Austrian nuclear physicist. They took her and shipped her back to New York, where she agreed to work exclusively for SHIELD. She was a big reason why the organization stayed ahead of HYDRA for several decades. The agents had gotten a commendation for bravery, and in an organization that threw itself in front of bullets on a daily basis, that was a huge fucking deal. Clint’s pretty sure the award is still hanging somewhere in Fury’s office.

Clint even met the physicist once, although he hadn’t realized it at the time. She’d bought him a coffee sometime after Lila’s birth, when he still had dad brain and hadn’t remembered his wallet. He’d liked her a lot for that.

Shit. _Shit_. He can’t tell Mikhail any of this. He doesn’t know the location of any safe houses, and he’s got no idea where Macton and Bond might be now. But he knows where they’re going to end up eventually, and that’s just as dangerous.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Clint says, stepping back a little, schooling his expression into neutral. He'd kill for Natasha's poker face right now. She never gives anything away. “You’ve had me here for over a month, sir. Any information I might have had isn’t going to be relevant anymore.”

Mikhail is reading his face carefully. Clint keeps his posture open and waits.

The other shoe drops.

“You disappoint me, Agent Barton,” Mikhail says, and Clint feels a cold sense of dread snaking through him. “I thought we agreed not to lie to each other.”

“I’m not lying, sir.”

“You are. We both know it.”

All of Clint’s alarms are going off. He dreads that room, that dark room, but this is a line in the sand that he can’t cross. This was a monumental turning point for SHIELD. He can’t fuck up the future like this. “I’m not,” he says again, but he knows it’s useless. He prepares himself for…something, he’s not sure what. Another whipping? Five more weeks of sensory deprivation?

He gets a grip on himself. He handled it once. He can handle it the second time.

His eyes flicker towards the light anyway.

Mikhail smirks a little at the movement. “I am sorry, Agent Barton. I told you, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“So don’t,” Clint says, hands half up in a defensive position.

“ _I’m_ not going to.” At that, Mikhail takes his files and leaves. The door slams shut behind him with an odd sense of gravity.

Well, that’s what he was waiting for.

Time to move.

Instantly, Clint hurries to his bed. He slides his hand under the thin mattress and finds the nearly invisible hole he’d picked at during those first two days, then extracts the needle he’d hidden there. Between the various IV treatment, a stray needle had ended up on the floor on the third day. Clint had immediately covered it with his foot, then later that evening, had transferred it into the mattress under the guise of sleeping on his stomach.

He shoves it into the padlock around his ankle and picks it within ten seconds— _getting sloppy_ , he hears Natasha chide him—and quickly hurls the lock at the camera in the corner. It shatters instantly in a perfect hit.

Then he drags the bed over to the other side of the room. Stupid of them not to bolt it down, really. SHIELD would never have overlooked that. Once it’s in place, he jumps up on it and stretches up for the ceiling vent above him. It’s small. It’ll be a tight fit. But he’s lost enough weight that it’ll probably work.

“Don’t be a pessimist,” he mutters. “It’ll definitely work.”

And it does, surprisingly. He has to jump, but his grasping fingers make contact and he manages to yank the vent open. Then he gets off the bed, grabs the water trough from the other side of the room, and carries it over. Five days of semi-adequate nutrition isn’t really enough to combat weeks of starvation, but he’s running on so much adrenaline right now that he feels like he could lift just about anything.

He climbs on the bed, then climbs on the trough, and hoists himself into the ceiling. It’s a tight fit, but he’s lost just enough weight that he can make the crawl. For a moment he debates trying to close the thing behind him, but then he decides he doesn’t care. The bed is telltale enough, not to mention the trough, and it’s not like he can put those back. They’ll figure it out. No point in wasting time with the vent.

Forward, then. He’s got no idea _where_ he’s going, but anywhere is better than here.


	12. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Clint plays a shitty version of real life MarioKart, and has a monumentally stupid idea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that some of the physics here are a tad unrealistic but this is the MCU, where the rules are mostly made up and the points don’t matter. Roll with it.

Clint know the _exact_ moment they realize he’s out, because he hears the yells echoing all the way through the vents to where he is. He allows himself a grim smile as he army crawls forward. His elbows hurt like hell, but this is definitely worth it. He almost wishes he could see Mikhail’s face. What a fucking dick.

_Stay focused, Hawkeye_ , he thinks. _You’re going to run out of vent at some point. You need a plan._

He comes to a juncture shortly after that and after a mental coin toss, goes left. And for once his luck continues to hold, because he finds himself suddenly over what looks like a supply closet. With _clothes_.

“Fuck yeah,” he mutters, trying to see if anyone else is in there. It looks empty. So he takes a chance and shoves on the vent, swinging it down. Then he wriggles forward and sticks his head in. Yep. Empty.

He hits the ground in a shower of dust, then immediately sets about raiding the closet. It’s a basic green HYDRA uniform. Same thing Mikhail wears most days when he’s not in a suit, although this one doesn’t have any decorations or medals on it. Even better, honestly. The last thing he needs is to be noticed. A peon’s uniform is perfect.

Clint closes the vent and pulls the uniform cap low over his face. He almost wishes he didn’t have a mohawk, because if anyone makes him take off the hat, he’s screwed. No time to find something to shave it off, though. He’ll have to risk it.

There’s also nothing he can really do about the vent dust on the floor, but he kicks it around a bit until it’s mostly blended in. Then he opens the door and steps out. The hallway is empty and long. There’s no indication which way is which.

Coin toss. He goes right this time, feeling fairly confident when the ground starts to rise underneath his feet. Even more confident when a group of guys in the same uniform as him rush past, shouting in Russian at each other. Clint picks up his pace and slips into the group seamlessly. No one even looks at him.

They lead him all the way up and into a large open space. A hangar bay. With jeeps and planes and motorcycles and trucks. Clint has to bite his cheek to keep from smiling. He’s gonna get out. He’s gonna do it.

_Don’t celebrate just yet, soldier,_ he hears Cap say. _Still got a long way to go._

Invisible Cap is right. Clint still has to steal one of the cars and then get out of here. Without being spotted, preferably. Also, he’d _really_ like a gun.

He follows his group around the edges, closer to the door. It’s a decent day outside. Cloudy and chilly, but not horrible. There’s no snow, at least. _Wonder what month it is._ He’d left his time in February, but there’s no way to say that it was the same month here when he landed. But if he had to guess, he’d say it was probably getting into summer—given Natasha’s descriptions of Russian in winter, anyway.

Someone shouts orders at his little group. They shout back and disperse into smaller groups, each going towards a different part of the hangar. Must be some kind of maintenance crew? Clint attaches himself to a small group and hopes no one asks him any questions.

They don’t. A clipboard is shoved into his hands, followed by vague pointing instructions towards a specific motorcycle. Clint takes it and steps over, pretending to look busy. The bike is nice. Definitely vintage— _no, Clint, you’re in 1965, this is standard_ —but he used to ride something similar when he was younger, he can figure it out. He’s set to go, as long as he can get keys, or if he can hotwire—

There’s a commotion behind him. Clint turns to look with the rest of them, hoping against hope that it’s not what he thinks it is.

It is, of course. Mikhail and a group of soldiers are shouting orders and spreading out. Looking for him. They either saw the room he came out of, or they took a very accurate guess. Either way, he’s out of time.

He glances at the bike again, sends a silent _thank_ _you_ to whoever was dumb enough to leave the keys in the fucking ignition—seriously, HYDRA needs to get their shit together—and jumps in. In the shouting and chaos, the engine starting goes unnoticed.

His twist on the accelerator and subsequent race towards the door does not. He blasts through onto the open ground and orients quickly, accelerating towards the gates at the far end of the compound. They’re already starting to close, but Clint just revs the bike harder and prays to anyone who’s listening that he makes it. He’s either gonna get through them or wreck the bike. Hopefully the first one, because the second one would _definitely_ ruin his day.

It’s narrow, so narrow that he instinctively closes his eyes, but then he’s out and laughing wildly as the bike careens into the woods. “Fuck yeah!” he screams, turning to avoid a tree, letting out a war whoop for good measure. He’s not clear. Not by a long shot. He can already hear the cars coming after him. But he’s out, and that’s half the battle.

He keeps driving east, based on the half-brained idea that they went west to get to the HYDRA base. Or at least he thinks they went west. He’s not really sure. But it’s morning, and east puts the sun in their eyes, so that’s what he’s going for.

Clint chances a look back, then sort of wishes he hadn’t. Seven cars in pursuit. Not good. At least it’s 1965 and not 2020, so it’s not like they can send out drones after him to distract him. Planes, maybe? His history isn’t great for this era, and especially not great for Soviet HYDRA technology.

No point in worrying. He needs to focus. There’s a distant smear on the horizon visible every time he crests a rise, and he’s pretty sure that’s a town. He angles towards it and twists the throttle harder.

They finally catch up to him about two minutes later. Clint ducks a hailstorm of bullets and wrenches the bike to the left, narrowly missing a tree before almost slamming sideways into another car.

“Don’t _shoot_ him you idiots, we need him alive!”

That voice he knows. He glances over and sees Mikhail at the driver’s seat in the car next to him. There’s a gun pointed at him, but it’s not a regular gun, it’s a—

He ducks just in time to see the dart fly over his head and embed itself in a tree. “Jesus Christ!” he shouts, swerving hard to his right, wincing as something whips him in the forehead. Blood drips down towards his eye, but he doesn’t dare move to wipe it away.

Up a hill, down a hill, dodge a tree, duck a branch. Clint feels like he’s in a particularly shitty version of MarioKart. The hills are starting to get more rugged and the motorcycle is grinding through its gears. It’s tough, but it’s not made for this.

He glances back at Mikhail, then forward again. There’s something up ahead and he’s got a stupid idea forming—a _monumentally_ stupid idea. Monumental to the point of being suicidal. But he’s running out of options, and monumentally stupid is about all he’s got left.

_First rule of escaping,_ he hears his first SHIELD instructor tell him, _is that you have to be willing to do what the other guy isn’t._

Hopefully, they’re not willing to do this.

“Agent Barton!”

The trees fall away and reveal the top of a cliff. Clint grits his teeth and pushes the bike harder, praying to anyone who will listen that this works.

“There is nowhere for you to go!” Mikhail yells. Clint lets out a little hysterical laugh. No, there’s really not. But he’s always been one to forge his own path.

He drives the motorcycle straight forward off the edge of the cliff.

For a moment he’s suspending in midair, flying over the terrifyingly large gap from one cliff to the next. The wind catches his hair and and the thrill of adrenaline makes everything painfully intense. He can see everything up here. The colors of the rock face, the glint of sunlight on the river below, the way the wind is blowing the trees on the bluff across from him.

_Beautiful_ , he thinks, and then he’s pushing upwards. He grips the handlebars, puts his feet on the seat, and launches himself forward with all the strength he possesses.

For a heart stopping moment, he thinks he’s not going to make it. He has a sudden image of himself falling down into the ravine below, breaking his body on the sharp rocks.

But then he slams into the cliff edge with enough force to wind him completely. Below him, the bike hits the rocks and tumbles down with a fantastic screech of metal. His hands desperately scrabble at the rocks, hoping to find something to hold onto. Just as he’s about to slip backwards, his fingers catch on a rock and he pulls hard, channeling every ounce of desperation into a single motion.

He crawls up the last ten or fifteen feet, onto the clifftop, then collapses onto his back, breathing heavily. He lays there for a whole minute.

“I’m alive,” he tells the sky, or maybe himself. “I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m alive.”

_Keep moving, Legolas,_ Tony scolds him. _Party’s not over yet._

Clint slowly rolls over and pushes himself to one knee. He takes another couple shuddering breaths, still half-convinced he’s dead, and then he looks across the gap.

They’re all standing there. All seven cars and their occupants. Dart guns and real guns aimed at him, but nobody is firing. They’re just staring, slack jawed and wide-eyed. Mikhail is standing in the middle of them, gun held loosely in his hand, an expression of utter disbelief on his face.

Clint stands up and grins at him, triumph settling into his chest with a roar. He almost doesn’t care what happens next. He’s always going to remember this moment, standing bloody and bruised and fucking _alive_ , looking across an impossible gap at the man who had tried so hard to break him.

There are so many things he could say. So many Stark-worthy one-liners. He can feel them forming in his chest, but in the end he doesn’t say a word. He just winks, and then offers a dramatic bow worthy of a Shakespearean stage.

Mikhail’s face gives an ugly twist and he raises his gun, but Clint is already running into the woods on his side of the bluffs.

The bullet doesn’t even come close to him.


	13. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I know the timeline theory here doesn’t exactly fit with the movie's "the past becomes your future when you time travel", but I have my own canon that only removing the infinity stones or massively changing past events can cause damage or complete shearing to the timeline. Otherwise I’m subscribing to the Doctor Who theory that time is a big ball of wibbley-wobbly timey wimey stuff and things happening in the past can have some effect on the future, but most shit will work itself out. I think it makes sense.

It takes Clint the rest of the day to walk to town. He doesn’t really _want_ to go there—HYDRA is stupid, but they’ve got to know that’s where he’s going—but his options are very limited. He’s alive, but he has no food, no water, and no idea of where he is other than “somewhere in Russia’s asshole.” That town is his best option for survival beyond the next couple days.

He’s got to be way the hell in north, because the sun is up for a _long_ time. It’s not dark enough to hide until he reaches the outskirts. He melts into the shadows and refuses to acknowledge how those same shadows also turn his stomach. Clint Motherfucking Barton is _not_ afraid of the dark.

A little stone wall surrounds the town. He hops it easily and creeps along the outside by a small farmhouse. Food first, to quiet his steadily growling stomach. And water. Then he needs to figure out where he is and how to get a message to SHIELD.

His feet crunch against the cold grass as he gets closer. There’s somebody outside—a kid, it looks like. Teenager, maybe? Clint can barely make out his outline in the darkness. He starts to turn the opposite direction—probably best to avoid all people—when he hears it.

_Swish._

_Thunk._

He knows those sounds.

Someone yells from inside the farmhouse. A name, probably, because the kid turns and yells something back, sounding exasperated. There’s another _swish thunk_.

Clint jumps back over the wall and stays low, moving back towards the farmhouse. There’s another yell. Then the door opens, spilling light across the yard. Clint ducks as a woman comes storming out.

She marches over to the teenager and grabs him. Clint almost has to laugh. He can hear the conversation in his head, even without understanding the language. The exasperated tone of a mother doesn’t change across time or culture, apparently. The two exchange heated words and gestures before the teenager finally throws his hands up and storms towards the house, stopping to place something in a chest by the stairs before going inside.

He waits five minutes before venturing close, then another two while listening for any sign the teenager might be coming back. But all that happens is the lights downstairs turn off, and there’s an echoing sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs.

Clint darts over to the chest and opens it, unable to stop the grin from spreading across his face. “Hello, sweetheart,” he mutters, reaching in and pulling out a beautiful bow. “Aren’t you just a _lovely_ thing?”

It really is a nice bow. A vintage recurve in absolutely fantastic condition—which makes sense, when he remembers he’s still in 1965. Clint digs in the chest a little more and comes up with a quiver full of arrows, then a pair of gloves.

Well, it’s definitely not his SHIELD-issued collapsible . But it’s _something_ , and he’ll take what he can get. He gears up and does a couple test pulls. The bow is really nice. He almost feels bad stealing it. Poor kid is gonna have a sad day.

Clint slings the quiver over his back and steals away from the farmhouse. The shadows don’t turn his stomach anymore. What’s to be afraid of, when he’s got his best weapon in hand and a mission to complete?

The town is cute, honestly. Small one and two story houses dot the gravel roads twisting through it. The main wide road is poorly paved, and he can see the faded letters of old storefronts that are closed for the night. A dry fountain in the middle hosts a statue of an angry looking man.

Clint sticks to the little houses, vaulting fences and crossing yards as quickly as he can. Once, a half-awake angry goat threatens to give him away, but Clint freezes in place long enough that the animal goes back to sleep instead of raising an alarm.

Food. He needs to get food. Food, drink, and contact SHIELD. And steal a coat or something, because his stolen HYDRA uniform isn’t cutting it. He’s _cold_. He’ll have to break into one of these houses. On the plus side, no alarms to worry about. Not like 1965 has ADT everywhere. It’s laughably easy to jimmy the lock on one of the back windows, then quietly slip inside.

The interior is alright, if a little rustic. There’s a table with a truly ugly tablecloth on it. Opposite that is a counter with a stove, a sink, and a few kitchen implements. Laundry is strung across a makeshift line that splits the whole room in half. Clint gently pushes aside a skirt and spots a loaf of bread on the other side, which he promptly tears into.

He ducks some hanging pots and peeks around the doorway into what must be the main room. Staircase to the left, front door straight ahead. Fireplace. Rocking chair. There’s a coat laid over the top of that, which he promptly picks up. It’s too big, but it looks plenty warm. He pulls off the quiver and puts it on, then freezes as a creak from upstairs echoes through the dark like a gunshot.

There’s nowhere to hide, so Clint just leaves, sliding the window shut quietly once he’s slipped through. Might have just been the house, might’ve been HYDRA. No point in taking chances now.

The night is still cold but the coat helps a lot. Some part of him feels bad about taking things from these people who obviously have so little, but right now he can’t afford to be sentimental. Survival comes first.

Two houses later, he hears it. The distinctive crunch of boots on gravel. That’s definitely HYDRA. He crouches down by a well and watches the patrol walk by. They’re sloppy, honestly. Not checking their corners, not on alert. Dart guns held loosely in limp hands. One of them is even smoking a cigarette. Giving away their position with unmoderated voices and loud feet.

Clint could kill them all. He really could. He’s already reaching for the arrows when he hears Banner’s voice in his head, murmuring caution. _Element of surprise, Barton. Don’t give that up._

Which frankly is some rich advice coming from a guy who turns into a giant green rage monster. But he’s right. Clint drops his arm and lets them walk past. They don’t know he’s here. He would be stupid to give that up.

Besides, he still needs to find some communication. A radio, or a phone. Something. This town is small and kind of rustic, but they’ve got to have _something_.

He finds it about twenty minutes later. In the back of what must be the local store or pharmacy—he can see shelves through the window—there’s a very dusty and gross looking payphone set into the wall. _Score_.

Clint creeps up to it. He hasn’t used one of these in a long time, not since a mission went sideways about ten years ago and he got stuck in Spain with two bullet wounds, no pants, and no way home. It had been a weird day.

He pats down his new coat and finds a few coins in the pocket. There’s a dial tone when he picks it up, which is promising. He won’t have to hotwire it to call out. Then he pushes the coins into the slot and punches in a number.

He’s not expecting to dial SHIELD directly. He’s not an idiot. But every agent, on every mission has a contingency plan. Every mission comes with a phone number to dial just in case something goes wrong, and a code to accompany it. The code is a last ditch, time-crossing “please fucking rescue me” bat signal. Whoever answers the phone will record his number and his name, then put that in a folder and tuck it somewhere in the SHIELD archives to gather dust. When he doesn’t return at his appointed time in fifty years, someone will go and look, find the year, date, and coordinates, and send a team to retrieve him.

Or hopefully that’s how it will go. Clint is supposed to be in 1995, but hopefully someone at SHIELD will realize that something went off track, literally, and they’ll look in the other archives. It’s a crap plan, but it’s the best he’s got. He dials and prays that someone is paying attention.

The phone rings long enough to make his stomach sink. He doesn’t like this, he’s too exposed out here. Literally all any HYDRA agent has to do is walk around the corner and he’s fucked.

Finally, a bored voice answers. “Yes?”

Relief floods him, so much so that it takes him a minute to actually speak. “Go secure.”

“Transmission is secure.”

Clint glances around. “Barton. 74256387. Coordinates unknown. Somewhere in northern Russia. HYDRA base near Murmansk. I’m in a small town about seven miles east of the base. Request immediate extraction.”

“Understood.” The line goes dead.

Clint hangs up. The back of his neck prickles, and he ducks just in time to see one of those fucking darts embed itself in the wall where he was standing two seconds ago. He whirls, already drawing, and lets loose while running. The arrow finds its mark and the guy falls, but there are three others. Clint ducks another dart and fires again. Two down.

The other two are yelling now, fumbling for their real guns. He doesn’t give them the chance. He pulls two arrows from the quiver and fires, hitting each in the forehead with a single shot. Dead. Four down.

Then he runs. Part of him wants to collect the arrows, he only has seventeen now, but he needs to move. Too much attention will be on that spot, and even in the shadows he suddenly feels exposed as hell. He needs to get off the ground.

So he climbs a house. Slings the bow over his shoulder, grips the drainpipe, and scales it. At the top, he rolls onto the roof and crawls to the peak, tucking his back into the raised dormer. He nocks another arrow, waiting. Looking for Mikhail.

Except Mikhail doesn’t show. It’s just another patrol, checking on their friends. They spread out when they see the carnage, hands on guns and eyes looking around wildly. But they don’t look up.

Nobody ever looks up.

Finally they disperse, dragging the bodies of their friends. Clint watches them go, then crawls over the roof to watch them run through the streets on the other side. He counts twenty-seven total, not including the four he shot.

“Lots of guys for one lousy SHIELD agent,” he mutters. They must really want that information. He wonders how far Macton and Bond have gotten, if they have the physicist yet or not. They must be causing a hell of a lot of trouble for Mikhail to get this desperate to recapture him.

Or hell, maybe it’s personal. Clint understands revenge better than most.

It’s starting to get light again. He’s definitely way too far north. He needs to hide somewhere that’s not a roof. Nobody ever looks up, but he doesn’t want to be stuck up here come daylight. That’s pushing it too long.

He edges over to the end of the dormer, then peers into the window. A bed, unoccupied. A dresser. A door. No people. He eases the window open and slides in, landing with a creak that makes him wince. But no HYDRA agents come storming up the stairs, and after a moment he steps away from the window and slides down on the floor beside it.

Christ, he’s tired. He’s so tired. His eyes are closing and it’s not good, this isn’t a good place to sleep, he’s literally in someone else’s house and he needs to _fucking stay awake_ , needs to slap himself or stand up or—

“дерьмо́,” someone says.

Or get a massive, body-wide adrenaline surge. That’ll work too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't have time to reply to comments, but I loved your reactions for the last chapter! I've had that one written for a few days and I was so excited to see what you all thought about his thrilling motorcycle escape. It was a lot of fun to write that.


	14. Chapter 13

Clint jackknifes up, drawing his bow. Only years of training stop him from instantly releasing as he sees his target—a brown haired, middle-aged woman with a terrified expression. She puts her hands up, cringing away. Behind her, a little girl ducks out of sight, burying her face in the swishing skirt. He spots the little homemade doll in her tightly clenched hands. She can’t be more than seven or eight.

There’s a long silence between them. Clint doesn’t relax, but he doesn’t fire either. His eyes search the woman for an expression, for some sign that she’s going to give his position away.

She doesn’t. Instead, she slowly lowers her hands, then murmurs something in Russian to the little girl and gently touches her head. Then she looks back at Clint. “American?”

He nods. No point in hiding that.

“SHIELD?”

He nods again. No point in hiding that either, especially if she knows to ask.

“They are looking for you,” she says, indicating the agents outside.

“I know.” He doesn’t move.

“They offered a reward.”

Figures. _Wonder how much it’s for._ “You gonna turn me in?”

More silence. More stillness. His heart is beating so fast that it’s an effort to control his breathing. He really doesn’t want to kill her. She has no part in this, and she’s got a kid…

“I have food,” she says, gesturing down the stairs. “You are hungry?”

The little girl peeks out from behind her. Clint slowly lowers his bow. “Yes.”

“Come.” She waves him forward. He keeps the arrow nocked, but steps forward and down the stairs at her instructions.

This house is very similar to the one that he stepped into before. Same layout, same dingy appliances. If anything, they look worse in the slowly growing daylight. He sits in a chair, still on edge, and she pulls something wrapped in cloth from an icebox. “Blini,” she says, setting some small pancake-looking things in front of him. “Eat.”

He takes a bite. They’re cold, but pretty good. “Thank you,” he says, his mouth full. 

The floor creaks behind him and Clint whirls, jumping to his feet and pulling back on the arrow. It’s a boy, probably fourteen or fifteen, standing there with a gun in his hand. It’s not pointed at anything, but it’s there. 

The woman runs forward and stands between them, mimicking their positions from upstairs. They argue. The boy doesn’t take his eyes off Clint, and Clint keeps the arrow aimed at his heart. _Come on, kid. Stand down._

Finally, the woman takes the gun. The boy scowls at her, then storms back up the stairs. She turns back to Clint and tucks the gun into the waistband of her skirt. “My boy,” she says. “He is young and impressionable.”

“I’m sorry,” Clint says, easing up on the bow. He shifts uncomfortably, then adds, “I shouldn’t be here. I should go.”

“No.” She puts a hand on his shoulder. “It is daylight. They will see. You wait.” She fills a glass of water and sets it in front of him. “Drink. Eat.”

“I’m putting you in danger,” he says. “If they find me here…”

“They will not.” She sets more blini in front of him, then murmurs something to her daughter. The girl scampers from the room. 

There’s a long silence while he eats. The blini is fantastic, light and easy on his stomach. He isn’t able to eat as much as he’d like, but it’s enough to finally satisfy the gaping pit in him. When the blini is gone, she takes the empty plate from him and puts it in the sink. “You are tired?”

“Yeah,” he admits, trying to stifle a yawn. He can’t remember the last time he slept, and with a finally full stomach, it’s getting harder to stay awake. 

The little girl reappears with a small bowl and a cloth, which she sets in front of him. At his questioning look, she touches above her eyebrow. Clint mimics her movements and hisses in pain as he touches the cut from the tree branch. “Oh.” 

She cleans the cut for him, softly apologizing in Russian when he winces in pain. Eventually, the dried blood is off his face and the water is rust colored. “Thanks,” Clint says, and she smiles shyly at him, still clutching her doll in one hand.

“Upstairs,” the woman says. “Come.”

She leads him upstairs to the room he came into. “You can rest here.”

He looks at the bed, which looks incredibly inviting, and then back at her. She seems to understand his unspoken concern, because her face softens and she puts a hand on his arm. “You are safe here,” she says. “I promise this.”

He believes her. He shouldn’t, but he does. Or maybe he’s just too tired to argue. Either way, he kicks off his HYDRA boots and unslings his quiver, then sets both that and the bow next to the bed. Then he tentatively lays down, a little unsettled by the way her piercing blue eyes watch his every movement. 

“Rest well,” is all she says, and then she backs out of the room, closing the door behind her. Clint hears it click shut and lock. He spares it a brief moment of concern before sleep pulls him under. 

***

The sensation of being watched pulls Clint from his sleep. His subconscious brain is prickling with unease, and he awakens with a violent start, grabbing the bow beside him and rolling off the bed, arrow already nocked and drawn.

The little girl stares back at him. She’s holding the hand of another kid—not the oldest boy, this one’s a little younger—and they both have wide, terrified eyes. Clint immediately relaxes the bowstring and lets out a breath. “Hey kids,” he says, putting the bow on the bed. “Sorry.”

The girl turns and runs out of the room. The boy stays, his head tilted in curiosity. He’s the spitting image of his mother, with the blue eyes and brown hair. “A-mer-ican,” he says, tripping over the word. “You…Am-er-ican?”

“Sure am,” Clint says. He tries for a smile. “Good old USA.”

1965\. Smack dab in the middle of the Cold War. Hell, smack dab in the middle of the fucking space race. Clint’s sure he’s probably the first American this kid has ever seen, Russian school propaganda notwithstanding. Almost can’t blame them for staring at him. He’d want to see the novelty too. “I’m Clint,” he says, gesturing to himself. “Clint Barton.”

“Jakob,” the boy says shyly.

Clint extends a hand to him across the bed. “Nice to meet you, Jakob.”

The door creaks open and the woman steps in. She snaps something in Russian to the boy, who immediately flushes with embarrassment and hurries out the door. “I am sorry,” she says. “They were not supposed to disturb you.”

“It’s fine,” Clint says, standing up. He pops his back and picks up his bow. “How long was I out?”

“Three hours.” She hands him a bundle. “Clothes.”

He takes them, suddenly aware of the sheer amount of mud and dirt on him. He feels bad for getting it on the bed. “Thank you.”

She closes the door, leaving him to change. He quickly strips, trying to minimize the amount of dirt on the floor. The clothes aren’t a perfect fit, but they’re well-made and warm. He slings the coat on, then the quiver, then spots the tiny attached bathroom and hurries in.

Coming back into the room, he notes a few details he’d missed earlier. This must be the woman’s room. There’s a few makeup items on the dresser top, and a mirror. There’s also a picture of a man with a black ribbon across it. He’s smiling, dressed smartly in a HYDRA uniform.

The door opens again. Clint looks up at the woman, then gestures wordlessly to the picture.

“My husband,” she says. “He was working at the base.”

“He died?”

Pain writes itself all over her, an expression so severe that for a second Clint feels incredibly guilty for asking. But then it’s gone, and she straightens up. “They said it was a training accident.”

He nods. He’s heard that story before.

“We met in America, you know,” she says, crossing her arms. “At the University of Chicago.”

“Really?” _Well, that explains the English._ He’d been wondering.

“My father and his father were involved in research and development there. We were there until the end of the war.”

Research and development. The Manhattan project, probably, if she’s referring to World War Two. “I’m sorry he’s gone.”

He realizes he’s probably wearing the man’s clothes, which is probably why she’s looking at him like that. “You look a little like him,” she says. “He would have liked you, I think. He was not happy with HYDRA in the end.” Sadness fills her face. “I think that is why they killed him.”

“Probably.” He picks up his bow.

“You are leaving?”

“Yeah.” He gestures to the window. “The longer I stay, the more danger I put you in. You’ve got kids.”

She nods. “There’s a barn half a kilometer to the north. It’s abandoned. You might be safe there.”

Well, _might be safe_ is better than nothing. “Okay,” Clint says, stepping over towards the window. “I can’t thank you enough for all this. For letting me stay here. I wish I could repay you.”

“Get away from them,” she says. “Survive. That will be enough.”

Clint eases open the window and checks the area. No patrols. It’s too bright outside, but he can see the barn in the distance. “Thank you,” he says again, one leg out the window. “I won’t forget you.”

He pulls himself back up to the corner of the dormer. She must close the window behind him, because there’s a click as soon as his other leg gets out of the frame. Clint settles into a perch and nocks an arrow.

There’s some cover, but mostly there’s a fair amount of open land to run across. He’ll have to cross it at some point if he wants to hide in the barn. No question about it. And he’s got no idea what time it is, but based on the sun it’s probably early morning. He could stay up here and wait the whole day—wouldn’t be the first time—or he could chance it. Which choice is smarter?

“What do you guys think?” he murmurs, asking his invisible team.

_I’d move,_ Falcon says. _The barn has better cover. In the dark you were fine. In the day you’re a sitting duck._

“You would know, bird-man,” Clint says, checking for patrols. Still nothing. The silence is almost starting to bother him more than if there were constant patrols. Either they left, which he finds very unlikely, or they’re stupid, which is more likely, or they know exactly where he is and they’re waiting for him to expose himself.

He only has to survive long enough for SHIELD to get to him. That’s all. He’s surprised they haven’t come already, but maybe they’re having trouble pinpointing his exact location. Then again, it’s not like they would have dropped in from a helicarrier. It’s likely a two man extraction team, and they’re probably hiding just as much as he is.

There’s also the possibility they never got his message, and he’s going to be stuck in 1965 forever.

_Stop worrying and move, Hawkeye,_ Wanda whispers to him. _They’ll be here._

Right. He needs to get out of his head.

He grips his bow and slides down the roof, then jumps and rolls to the ground. Looks around again. Still nothing.

Okay. Run.

He’s fast. He’s always been fast, and he’s only gotten faster since hanging out with the Avengers. A mere human doesn’t keep up with superheroes without working on it. He’d cut his mile time down considerably. Steve had him beat at long distance, but Clint could almost get him on the sprints.

A dart whizzes over his head, pocking the ground in front of him, and Clint swears loudly, turning up the speed as much as he can, desperately wishing Pietro was still alive to help him. He practically crashes through the barn door, then scrambles up into the loft and positions himself by a window.

Yep. They saw him. Seven guys, all heavily armed with those fucking dart guns plus some real ones, all coming his way. He has seventeen arrows left. Not enough. He needs to get a gun. He needs one of their rifles. The real ones.

They fan out, approaching the barn from several sides. Clint quickly fires two arrows, hitting both agents approaching on his side. They collapse instantly. Clint jumps out the window and lands in the hay bales below, tucking and rolling back up to his feet. He sprints forward, snags a rifle, and slings it over his shoulder, drawing another arrow at the same time.

_Duck,_ Nat says, and he does, turning to his left. He fires, takes another one down. Five left. Fourteen arrows.

Sixteen, actually. He retrieves the two from the bodies closest to him, then takes off running across the open ground again. Back towards the houses. He’s got to find better cover, got to get out of sight and get—

He rounds a corner and literally runs into a HYDRA agent, bouncing backwards hard enough to lose his footing. He lands ungracefully on his ass with a grunt of pain and scrambles to his feet as fast as he can.

“Don’t move!” the agent shouts, aiming his gun right at Clint’s chest.

“Screw you,” Clint says, diving to the side as he draws an arrow. 15 left.

He ducks between two houses and hops a crumbling decorative fence. Three agents follow him. He takes them out with extreme prejudice. Twelve now.

There’s too many. There’s always more. Every corner he rounds, every street he crosses, they’re there. Clint does what he can, but it’s not enough. He should have stayed on that fucking roof, and _where_ the fuck is SHIELD? Clint runs and shoots and doubles back and shoots some more and eventually ends up climbing another drainpipe on a slightly fancier house overlooking the town square, where he tucks himself against the brick chimney and tries to catch his breath.

_Give me a sit rep,_ Cap orders.

Right. Sit-rep. He has four arrows left, then he’s down to the rifle. It’s an AKM. Standard issue for this time. Similar to an AK-47. 30 rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber. Fires forty rounds per minute on semi-auto. Effective range of 383 yards.

So basically, he has thirty-five shots, and then he’s done for. He’s got nowhere to go. He’s marginally safe up here, but he can’t stay here forever. He’s hungry again. He’s tired. He definitely could use a bathroom. There’s still no sign of SHIELD. HYDRA knows he’s here, and they’re on red alert. They want him alive, which is nice, but Mikhail is probably planning some gruesome torture, and that’s definitely not nice.

“Okay, Cap,” he mutters. “You want an official sit rep? I’m fucked.”


	15. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New tags added, please heed the warnings.

He falls asleep.

He doesn’t mean to, but he does. He’s stuck on the roof until some of the heat is off, and without his conscious permission, his brain decides that he’s safe enough. He goes into what Natasha called “power saving mode.” It’s that mission-ready sleep, where his brain is mostly offline but his senses are still on alert. It’s not the most restful, but it helps a little. Sadly, this isn’t even the worst place he’s ever slept.

Regardless, he’s alert enough to sense a change in the air. A jeep rolling up. A voice echoing across the ground.

Clint roars back to full alertness and draws his bow, staring down at the gathering below him. He knows that voice. Fucking Mikhail, climbing out of the jeep and yelling fiercely. Clint sights him, but Mikhail keeps standing by the fountain, never _quite_ getting in view, or at least not enough for a head shot. Fucker.

Mikhail shouts orders, and a large group of agents disperse, running to various houses and pounding on doors. They start gathering townspeople, shoving them into the center of the square by the fountain. There’s a crowd of thirty people by the time the agents are all back. Clint searches the faces, feeling a little better when he doesn’t see the woman or her kids. Well, the youngest kids anyway. The older boy, the one who’d threatened him, is standing next to Mikhail with a slightly terrified expression on his face, one hand holding tightly to a fistful of bills.

Clint puts the puzzle pieces together. They’d found him pretty quick once he left the house, which means they had to have some idea of where he was. That plus the money… “Little fucker turned me in,” he says to Nat.

_Are you really surprised?_

“Not really.” He relaxes the arrow, but keeps it nocked. He doesn’t like this whole ‘gather the townspeople’ crap. Everything about this spells trouble.

Mikhail looks around, then snaps something at an agent, who hands him a megaphone. An honest-to-god megaphone. _Gotta love the_ _1960s_. Clint hasn’t seen one of those since his circus days.

“Agent Barton,” the asshole says, finally stepping into view, and Clint draws his arrow back again. “I know you can hear me.”

“Oh yeah?" he mutters. "Hear this, dick.” He lets it fly.

Mikhail ducks. The arrow hits an agent standing directly behind him.

Clint blinks in surprise, because that’s not right. The only person who can duck his arrows is Steve, thanks to his insane reflexes. Not even Stark could do that with all his tech. Loki caught one once, but he was a Norse god, so there’s a little leeway there.

Maybe he missed?

No way. He never misses.

He doesn’t have time to puzzle it out. Mikhail points in his direction and shouts orders, and several HYDRA agents run his way. Clint trades the bow for the gun, trying to save his arrows, and takes down three of them before the gun jams. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he sighs, quickly examining it. After about ten seconds, he determines it’s not fixable and chucks it aside. “Well, alright then. Back to basics.”

He only has to take out Mikhail. If he can cut the head off the snake, the rest of them will be scrambling and he can get the hell out of here. He sights Mikhail, desperately wishing for his explosive arrows, and fires. The asshole ducks it _again_.

“Oh, just fucking _die_ ,” Clint growls. They know where he is now, dart guns aimed at him. He jumps up and runs across the roof, away from the town square, and leaps the distance to the next roof. From there he runs out of houses and then it’s back to the ground and the fucking foot chase starts all over again. Except this time he has only two arrows, and no gun. This day is going downhill very quickly.

He ends up on the second floor of someone’s house, crouched underneath a window and trying to gasp for air as quietly as possible. He does _not_ have the energy to keep doing this.

_Don’t give up yet,_ Wanda says. _You can’t give up yet._

“I’m not trying to,” he says. But the situation is dire, even if he can’t admit it out loud. Something is going to give here, and he’s got a sneaking suspicion that it’s going to end up being him. He’s down to one arrow—his other one found a home in an agent’s eye socket while he was running. No plan. No team. No rescue. He’s been up shit creek before, but this time is taking the gold medal.

There’s a knock on door. Clint jumps up at the sound, staying out of view of the open window, and nocks his last arrow. If he’s gonna go down, he’s gonna go down fighting.

“Agent Barton,” Mikhail says. “We know you are in there.”

He closes his eyes and thuds the back of his head against the wall. _Fuck_.

“I have someone who would like to see you.” There’s a sharp sound—a slap—followed by the cry of a kid.

Clint chances a peek out the window, and sees the little girl who cleaned his forehead. The woman’s daughter. She’s sobbing in terror and her arms are wrapped around her little doll. A HYDRA agent has his gun pressed to the back of her head. Four others have their guns aimed at the house, although not directly at him. They probably don’t know he’s upstairs. In the middle of them is Mikhail, standing with his arms crossed and a smug expression on his face.

His stomach sinks.

“Open the door, Agent,” Mikhail says. “Or he will kill her.”

Anger ripples through him, and he steps into view of the window, arrow pulled back. “Don’t you fucking dare,” he says, and Mikhail’s eyes flicker up to his position. The guns readjust. “She’s a kid.”

“She aided and abetted a fugitive,” Mikhail says. “She is an enemy of HYDRA.” He raises an eyebrow. “But if you come down, I will be lenient with her.”

Clint contemplates aiming for him again. No way he can duck this close. But then again, there’s no way he should have been able to duck the other arrows, and if he misses _again_ …

“Alright,” Clint says. “I’ll come down.”

“Wise choice, Agent Barton.” Mikhail smiles up at him. “Throw your weapons down first, if you please.”

“Okay.” He turns quickly and looses the arrow. It tears right through the wrist of the man holding the gun, severing tendons and muscle as it passes through. The gun falls to the ground as the man shrieks in pain, and the little girl does exactly what he was hoping she would do. She runs. Someone pursues her but she’s quick, and Mikhail snaps an order for the man to come back.

“Here you go,” Clint says, tossing the now useless bow out the window. “Down in a sec.”

The agent is swearing loudly at him, down on his knees and clutching the wound in his hand. Clint wonders if he’ll bleed out, and then decides that he doesn’t particularly care. They can all go fuck themselves. He drapes the coat over a chair as he steps through the kitchen. Hopefully whoever owns this house can get it back to the right family. No point in giving it up to HYDRA. It’s a nice coat.

He takes his last breath as a free man and pushes open the door, locking eyes with Mikhail. “Sorry, sir,” Clint drawls, leaning against the door frame in a display of nonchalance. “You’ll have to come back next week. Mom says I can’t come out and play right now.”

Mikhail rolls his eyes and makes an exasperated noise. “I have to say, I honestly did not think you would make it this far. I am almost impressed.” He's holding the bow, examining it closely.

“Seems like a miscalculation on your part,” Clint says, burying his hands in his pockets. “So you gonna shoot me or what?”

“I would like to,” Mikhail says furiously. “You have embarrassed me. I do not forgive that easily.” He hands the bow to a subordinate and walks towards Clint.

Clint takes a deep breath of the cold air, letting it burn his lungs. He commits the sensation to memory. “But you’re not going to.”

“Believe me,” Mikhail growls in his ear as he roughly handcuffs him, “by the time we have finished with you, you will wish for such an ending.”

“I’m sure,” Clint says. He waits for the fear, but there’s just emptiness in its place. Like Vormir, when he’d made the decision to die.

Mikhail pushes Clint down the path and to several HYDRA goons, who take his upper arms with way more force than necessary. They march him aggressively into the center of town, back to the small crowd. HYDRA agents surround the circle, guns held tightly. Nobody will look directly at him but he can practically taste the terror emanating from them in waves. Clint waits, every muscle vibrating with tension. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen and he doesn’t like it.

Mikhail walks away from them, disappearing between two houses. Clint looks over at the agent he shot and flashes a grin at him. “How’s the arm?”

The agent clearly doesn’t understand the words, but he picks up on the tone, because he snarls something very rude that Clint doesn’t need to translate. He laughs to himself, ignoring the slap to the back of the head one of the agents gives him.

When Mikhail comes back, he’s pushing the woman and her middle boy. Jakob, Clint remembers. The girl must be hiding. He can’t understand most of the rapid Russian coming from the woman, but he can take a guess at what she’s saying, and fear starts to trickle into his gut. “Look,” he says, trying to step forward. “Hey. Mikhail.”

The man doesn’t look at him. Doesn’t even seem to hear him. He’s berating the woman, gesturing wildly towards her, and then towards Clint. Making a speech to the townspeople. Making an example. She starts crying, pulling Jakob towards her chest. The oldest one, the boy with the dark eyes, runs forward and puts an arm around her shoulder, glaring at Mikhail. Jakob cowers in her arms and casts a terrified gaze at Clint.

“Hey!” Clint shouts again, earning himself an elbow in the gut. He ignores it. “Leave them out of this, man. They didn’t do anything!”

At this, Mikhail turns. He crosses the distance between them with lightning speed and slaps Clint hard across the face, splitting his lip and reopening the gash in his forehead. “Do not try and lie to me,” he snarls, cold anger rippling through his voice. “You are forgetting your lessons. And you are not in any place to dictate what happens here. I have tried again and again to teach you that your actions have consequences, Agent Barton.” He grips Clint’s throat and leans close to his ear, almost hissing the last words. “Now be quiet and endure your retribution.”

Mikhail turns back around and draws his gun, aiming it at the woman as he walks closer. A HYDRA agent rips Jakob from her. “Let this be a lesson to you all,” he says to the townspeople, but his words are English and Clint knows with a sickening feeling that the lesson is meant for him.

He wrenches himself forward, breaking the hold on his arms. “Don’t!”

The woman meets his eyes. There’s a terrible depth to that gaze, a heartbeat where they both know what’s going to happen and neither can do a goddamn thing about it.

He tries anyway. He’s running forward with no plan except to knock Mikhail down, to throw his aim off long enough for the woman and her kids to get away. But he is too slow, too far away, and Mikhail fires—

The woman screams, long and loud, but there is no wound on her, and for half a second Clint hopes against hope that Mikhail missed, or that it was a warning shot.

Then next to her, Jakob falls, a single bullet hole in his head.


	16. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hallucinations and sleep deprivation and beatings, oh my. Also, Clint has an unnerving amount of LOTR knowledge.

Clint feels like he should scream. He wants to. He can feel the sound clawing its way up his throat but something catches it and he just chokes instead, falling to his knees at the body of the boy.

He’s too young. He’s _too young_. Clint gasps for air but nothing comes in. All he can do is stare at those accusing blue eyes, wide open and frozen with his last expression. “N-no,” he finally manages. “ _No_!”

A soft hand touches his head and he flinches hard, but it’s just Mikhail sitting next to him. “You see, Agent Barton?” he asks, sliding down to grip Clint’s neck. “This is what happens when you involve other people in your schemes.” The fingers tighten, making him grunt in pain. “Look at your consequences.”

He is looking. He can’t take his eyes off the puddle of blood slowly spreading towards him. “This is all your fault,” Mikhail says. “This could have been avoided. _You_ did this.”

“You shot him,” Clint says. The words are hollow. “You _shot_ him. He’s a _kid_.”

“No. _You_ shot him. This is your fault. Remember this.”

He says other things too, but Clint isn’t listening anymore. There’s a buzzing in his ears drowning everything else out. The woman reaches out and draws Jakob into her arms, sobbing as she rocks the lifeless body. The oldest boy is crying too, clutching at the limp fingers and saying his name over and over. Clint feels sick.

Mikhail gives orders and someone pulls Clint to his feet, forcing him to stumble along as they escort him to a jeep. They push him inside and Mikhail climbs in after him. Neither one speaks as the car grumbles into life and pulls away from the town. Clint stares straight ahead, trying to think of anything other than what just happened. He can’t shake the image of those blue eyes. Jesus Christ, he was a kid. A _kid_.

He shouldn’t have shot the agent. That was stupid. He should have expected retaliation. Mikhail’s right. This is his fault. He should never have taken her help.

Mikhail’s thumb swipes over the tears on his cheek. “I hope you have learned what I was trying to teach you,” he says softly.

Clint jerks away. “Don’t touch me.”

He pulls back. “You are angry. I understand this. It was a hard lesson.”

“Fuck you, and fuck your lessons.” Clint presses himself against the side of the jeep, as far from Mikhail as he can get. “I’m going to fucking kill you for that. You’re on borrowed time now, you hear me? You’re a dead man walking.”

He doesn’t care that he missed two shots earlier. Next time, he won’t. Next time, the asshole won’t see him coming.

“I see,” Mikhail says, and he doesn’t even have the grace to look concerned.

Clint looks out the window. He needs to get himself under control. Whatever they’re going to do to him is not going to be pleasant, and he needs to get a grip before it happens. Or else it’s going to be worse.

“You are a very accurate marksman,” Mikhail comments some time later. “Particularly with the bow and arrow.”

“I’m an expert marksman with everything,” Clint snaps back. “I’m a fucking sniper.”

Mikhail absorbs this information, which Clint regrets giving a moment after he says it. _Get a goddamn grip on yourself, Barton._ “A sniper? Is that what you did for SHIELD?”

Clint clenches his jaw shut and looks away.

“I suspected as much. Lukas told me how you shot the men on the submarine, and then later when you threw the patches…” He sits back in his seat. “Well, I suppose that explains the ceiling vents as well.” He sounds amused again, with that note of pride in his voice. “You will make an excellent asset.”

_That_ gets his attention. “You’re out of your fucking mind if you think I’m gonna work for you.”

“Hmm,” is all Mikhail will say. “That is of no concern currently. There are questions that you have the answers to. We must get those out of the way first.”

Oh yeah. He’d almost forgotten the whole reason behind his escape. “I still don’t know anything,” Clint says. He doesn’t believe Mikhail believes him, but it’s always worth a try.

The other man raises an eyebrow. “Then why did you run?”

“Probably the threats of grievous bodily harm? Or I felt like stretching my legs. Take your pick.”

“You should have stayed,” Mikhail sighs. “I might have been able to convince them of your innocence.”

Clint looks at him. “Them? Who’s them?”

“You remember Lukas?”

Oh yeah. He remembers Lukas. Rotten motherfucker.

“He is my superior. He is in charge of this investigation. And now he thinks you have this information, and he is ready to extract it by any means necessary.” Mikhail leans over and puts a hand on Clint’s knee. “You want my advice, _ptichka?_ ”

“I don’t, actually.” He tries to pull away, returning his attention to the trees outside. 

The hand tightens. “Give them whatever information they desire, and give it to them quickly. Lukas is far more ruthless and creative than I, and he _always_ gets what he wants. I admire your tenacity, but this is one battle you cannot ever hope to win, and I do not wish to see you destroyed for want of trying.”

“I’m not just going to roll over and surrender,” Clint says. 

Mikhail’s voice is sorrowful. “I tell you this from my own experience, Agent Barton. Lukas’s methods are not ones you will wish to experience for long.”

_From my own experience?_ Clint snaps his head back to Mikhail, but the other man has already taken his hand back and is looking out his own window. 

Well, that’s not a great sign. Where the hell is SHIELD? They should have gotten his message by now. 

_They left you in 1965,_ some part of his mind hisses. _They’re never coming back for you._

No. He can’t think like that. The second he gives up hope, he’s dead. 

The van pulls back through the gates, then up to where he’d escaped from before. Mikhail opens the door and pulls Clint out. There’s a small crowd waiting for them, headed up by Lukas and his group of agents from the submarine. 

“Mikhail,” Lukas greets him. “I see you were successful.”

“He is very resourceful,” Mikhail says, patting Clint’s shoulder. “But we prevailed in the end. Your suggestion was very helpful.”

“Yes, congratulations, you’re all wonderful,” Clint says, moving away from Mikhail. “Can we get on with it?”

He doesn’t particularly want to be tortured, but he’s cold and tired and he doesn’t really want to stand around _waiting_ to be tortured either. Mikhail sighs. “You will have your hands full, I suspect,” he says, pushing Clint towards Lukas. The lackeys take him and push him onto his knees, forcing his head down.

He and Lukas exchange some information, then Lukas presses something into Mikhail’s hands and walks off. Mikhail kneels next to Clint and gently works his sleeve up. “That another sedative?” Clint asks, twisting to look at the needle. It’s green, which is somewhat alarming, and Clint really fucking hopes they’re not experimenting with some kind of Hulk juice.

“No.” He injects it into Clint’s arm, then nods to the boys. “Take him downstairs. Level seven.”

“Ooh, level seven. Sounds fun.”

They push and shove him inside, past all the cars in the hangar, and back down the way he’d originally escaped. It’s painful on its own, watching his progress be undone. Twenty-four hours of freedom and he’s back to where he started.

SHIELD might come. He did make contact. They might come.

Clint stumbles as the floor starts to slope down, then stumbles again. He can’t catch himself with his hands behind his back and none of the guys do either, so his stumble turns into a spectacular face plant that very nearly ruins his nose forever. He manages to roll just enough to take the brunt of it on his left shoulder and winces in pain.

They haul him back up to his feet. He’s still unsteady, and his vision isn’t quite straight. He’s oddly wired, like he just drank an entire pot of coffee. His skin is hot and his heart is thundering in his ears. Definitely not a sedative. Truth serum, probably.

Okay. That’s fine. Contrary to popular belief, truth serums don’t make it impossible to lie. They just make people suggestible. Loopy. Prone to spilling secrets. He’s had SHIELD training, and Avengers training, and Natasha training, which was the most dangerous out of all of them. She’d loaded him up with three different serums one time and questioned him for six hours in his own fucking apartment. He’d been a mess by the end of it. Fucking Natasha. He misses her.

They push him into a room and pull off his handcuffs, aiming no less than seven guns at his chest. He’s not suicidal, so he obeys their instructions to strip and kneel. They re-cuff his hands in front of him to a length of chain on the floor, then hook his feet to another bolt in the ground behind him. The result leaves him stuck on his knees; he can’t stand up with with the chain around his hands so short. He might be able to lay on his side, but he’ll try that when they’re not around. Once he’s secure, most of the guns back out. Only two stay to guard him.

Lukas comes back in then, carrying a bulky box in his arms. He sets it across the room from Clint and turns it to face him. It’s a clock. A huge clock, with the letters about half a foot tall. The display reads 00:00.

Okay, not a clock. It’s not midnight. A timer?

He hits a button and the clock flips to 00:00:01. Then 00:00:02. 3. 4. 5.

“It’s going the wrong way,” Clint tells him. “Bombs are supposed to count down.”

“This is not a bomb,” Lukas says, pulling something from his belt. A collapsible cane type thing. He snaps it open and taps Clint’s arm with it. “It is just to help you keep track. Mikhail informs me that you like knowing how long it’s been.”

“How long what has been?”

“You will see.” Lukas drags the cane over his shoulders. “Tell me what you know about Operation Star.”

“Sounds like a Peter Pan movie.”

The cane strikes him and he hisses in a breath, trying to stay relaxed. He can do this. He survived a whip, he can do this. Canes are nothing.

“Where are the Agents going?”

“Neverland.”

Another hit. “Give me the locations of SHIELD safe houses in Germany.”

“Second star to the right and straight on til morning.”

The trick with truth serums is to roll with them. Fighting is pointless. Give details instead. Endless, pointless, trivial details that don’t mean a damn thing. Bury them in so much shit that they’ll need weeks and a forklift to get out anything useful. And by then it’ll be too late.

So he starts talking. He’s always been good at this part. By the end of Natasha training he had spent an hour and a half straight talking about how Tolkien invented his own languages. She’d eventually untied him, given him water, and forbade him from mentioning the books ever again. Clint gave her a set for Christmas that year.

“Did you ever read Lord of the Rings?” he asks Lukas, and the conversation—well, monologue, really—goes from there. What can he say, he’s a fan of the tried and true methods. When Lukas asks about Operation Star, Clint tells him about the grammatical structure of the Elvish languages. When he asks about where the agents are going, Clint describes the world building qualities of Tolkien—“he always mentions the distant mountains, it just makes the whole thing seem grander than it really is, you know?” When Lukas gets in his face and shouts increasingly infuriated questions, Clint just smiles and talks about the differences between the Valar and the Maiar.

When his brain slips back into semi-alert mode he panics for a second at that last bit, because _T he Silmarillion_ wasn’t released until the 70s, but Lukas doesn’t seem to notice. He just keeps hitting Clint and asking the same questions over and over.

By the time he stops, the clock reads 00:45:52 and Clint is more welts than skin. “Oh, you’re done already?” he asks, twisting over his shoulder as he watches Lukas stalk out the door. “Come back, I’ve got way more.”

He doesn’t. The door slams, leaving just Clint and the two guards in the room. They’ll probably never leave him unguarded again, based on his last escape. He eyes the two of them and grins manically. “Hey there.”

“No talk,” one of them says, finger twitching towards a trigger.

“No shoot,” Clint says, nodding towards it. “You shoot the merchandise, your boss is gonna be pissed. I know, I’ve done it. This one time…”

His voice is dry and cracking by the time he finishes that tale, and Lukas still hasn’t returned. The clock says 1:13:31, which would be symmetrical if it wasn’t for that extra one. It annoys him a little bit.

The door creaks open and he turns enough to see Mikhail step in. He’s holding a bottle of water and something else. “Oh hi,” Clint says, wiggling his hands in a facsimile of a wave. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Hello, Agent Barton,” Mikhail says, kneeling next to him.

“Ooooh, I’m in trouble. Or still in trouble, I guess.”

“I see you have taken the harder path,” he says dryly. He opens the bottle and holds it up to Clint’s mouth. “I expected nothing less. Drink.”

“I don’t take candy from strangers,” Clint says, pulling away.

“Drink it willingly, or I will make you drink it.”

“Kinky.” But he doesn’t doubt it, and he doesn’t feel like drowning either, so he opens his mouth. Mikhail pours the water in one sip at a time.

“Well done,” he says, pulling the empty bottle back. “See how easy this can be? Just tell Lukas what he wants to know, and I will take you out of here.”

“So you can go back to whipping me?” Clint asks. “No, thanks. I’m comfy here.”

Mikhail sighs. “So be it.”

He takes the bottle and leaves. Clint wonders vaguely what that was about, then decides it doesn’t really matter. He’s not going to be able to focus clearly on a thought until the truth serum wears off.

So he goes back to Tolkien. He’s not sure how much the guards understand, but by the time the clock reads 2:04:40, they’re looking very, very irritated. Clint grins at them. “Bored yet? I haven’t even started on _The Hobbit_. That’s a whole ‘nother couple hours, you know.”

He opens his mouth to start when cold fingers suddenly touch the back of his neck. “I don’t recall you being this talkative,” a silky voice says in his ear. Clint flinches hard and twists away from the touch, nearly falling over. And there behind him, wearing that stupid helmet and a smug expression, is a face he’d hoped to never see again.

Loki.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentioned on my other fic but forgot to say so here—I started a new job, and updates are likely to be a little more sporadic than they were before. Gonna try and update every couple days.


	17. Chaper 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens when you can't trust your own memories?

He’s not real. Clint knows he’s not real. There’s a slightly blurry quality about him, like trying to watch a TV with a lousy frame rate. But he’s still here, and he’s touching Clint, and his mind is frozen with a fear edged in a brilliant blue.

“You can’t be here,” he tells Loki. “You _can’t_ be here.”

“Maybe I am,” Loki says with a grin. “Maybe I’m not. How can you tell?”

“You’re dead. Thor said you died. Thanos killed you.”

“Hmm,” is all Loki says. He stands in front of Clint and materializes his scepter. “I like this. You, on your knees in front of me. Where you belong.”

“Fuck off, you egotistical _asshole_.”

Loki smiles and reaches towards him. “I will enjoy having you as my servant again.”

Clint leans away from the scepter, but with the chains, he can’t avoid it. It touches to his chest and the familiar wash of blue settles into him, tinging everything in his vision. “ _No_!”

He pitches forward and hits his head on the ground. Blunt force trauma. Nat slammed him into a railing that first time but he doesn’t have a Nat and he doesn’t have a railing and he needs to get Loki _out out out_ of his mind he can’t do this again—

There are hands on him, pulling him back and pulling his head back and he’s screaming, thrashing in their grip, struggling to get away. One of the guards slaps him hard and he gasps in a breath, then stares up at their faces.

No blue. No Loki. _It’s not real, Hawkeye._

“Stop,” one of the guards orders, and after a moment he nods. They let go of him and step back, resuming their position by the door. Clint pulls himself back upright and tries to calm down.

Hallucinogenics. Probably in the green shit they shot into him. Or maybe in the water, he doesn’t fucking know. He presses his head into his hands. Okay. He’s okay. He can handle this.

The clock ticks by. He’s still wired from the truth serum, and it feels like ants are crawling all over him. At one point he’s pretty sure ants are crawling on him, but then he blinks and they’re gone. Loki shows up again, smirking as he leans against the wall of the cell, but then he’s gone and Thanos takes his place. Chitauri flicker in and out of the corners of his vision. Even Ultron makes an appearance, waxing philosophical in a way that makes Clint want to cover his ears more than his eyes.

At some point, the hallucinations start to taper off, losing their crystal clear quality in favor of a disintegrating, melting, Indiana-Jones-style sort of motion. Clint is laying on the floor, watching the visions spin in and out of focus. He taps his finger in time to the seconds on the clock. 12:03.03. 12:03.04. 12:03.05.

At some point his eyes drift shut, but then he’s rudely awakened by a kick to the ribs. “What the fuck was that for?”

“No sleep,” says the guard.

“What?”

“No sleep.”

“Fuck you,” Clint says, closing his eyes again. There’s another kick, then a jolt of electricity that makes him shout. The guard steps back with a vicious smile and pulls the stick away from his arm.

“No sleep. Kneel.” They force him back onto his knees and resume their position by the door.

Okay. Sleep deprivation. Classic torture technique. Nothing new. He’s got this. He’s swaying a little, but he can hold himself up. He can do it.

He keeps telling himself that as he watches the clock tick upwards.

Lukas comes back in at 12:45.31. “Hello, Agent Barton. How was your evening?”

“Great,” Clint says hoarsely. “Spiders climbed the walls. Very thrilling.” He looks up at the blond man. “You back for some more Middle-Earth?”

“Have you figured out the game by now?” Lukas asks. He’s still holding the cane in one hand, rolling it in between his fingers.

“Oh, this is a game? I prefer Monopoly, to be honest.”

“You tell me what I want,” Lukas says, striking the cane across Clint’s back, “and I will let you sleep. You don’t, and you will remain in this position. We’ll see who outlasts the other.”

Clint snorts. “You think I’ve never stayed awake before? I once sat in a perch for forty-five hours, waiting for a guy that never even showed up. It was like a longer version of prom night.”

Lukas shakes his head. “You are very stubborn, aren’t you?”

“It’s a talent. Acquired from many years of being a total pain in the ass.”

“You will give in, eventually.”

Clint meets his steel gaze. “Of course I will,” he says. “But you don’t know when. And what you need is time sensitive, isn’t it? Your physicist is gonna get far, far away, and you won’t be able to catch her.” He grins. “So all I gotta do is wait out the clock. And I’m a sniper, asshole. Waiting is my fucking day job.”

Lukas raises an eyebrow. “Who said anything about a physicist?”

“What?”

“You said, ‘your physicist is going to get far, far away.’” He kneels next to Clint and puts a finger under his chin. “We never told you what was missing, Agent Barton.”

Clint thinks back to the other cell, to the files Mikhail threw at him. _These two agents stole something from HYDRA. Something very important to us._

Some _thing_. Not some _one_. Dread starts to coil through him, and he closes his eyes. _Barton, you_ fucking _idiot._

“Mikhail said it,” he lies, trying to salvage the moment. “When he brought me the files.”

“No, he didn’t,” Lukas says. “Because he doesn’t know either. No one on this base except myself knows. And you, apparently.” He smiles triumphantly. “And I do have to wonder just _how_ you got that information.”

“I’m secretly psychic,” Clint says, his mind racing for some way he can convince Lukas that he doesn’t know anything. Nothing comes up. He’s screwed. “I can read minds. It’s very helpful.”

“Hmm.” Lukas stands up. “What am I thinking now?”

“That you really regret taking me prisoner, and now that you know how cool I am, you’re going to let me walk out of here.”

Lukas laughs. “Entertaining. I will enjoy our time together.”

“I’m sure you will,” Clint says wearily, preparing himself.

It lasts a long time. He tries not to scream at first, thinking he’s going to be manly about it, but then he gives up and screams anyway. Lukas doesn’t stop until he’s almost as winded as Clint is, breathing heavily as the cane drips blood oto the floor.

“Just tell me,” Lukas growls, wrenching Clint’s head back. “Just give _up_.”

Clint grins at him with blood-tinged teeth. He’d bitten through his own lip at some point. “Why don’t you?”

Lukas snarls and pulls something out of his pocket. Another syringe with green liquid inside it, more this time. “You thought what you saw before was bad?” he hisses, stabbing it into Clint’s arm while Clint tries not to picture himself morphing into the Hulk. “You will regret defying me.”He shoves him down, stalking over to the guards. “Keep him awake,” he orders them. “If he falls asleep, hurt him.” He looks back over his shoulder. “Enjoy your nightmares, Agent Barton. I’ll be back.”

“I’ll be back,” Clint mocks in his best Terminator impression, which is lost as the door slams shut.

His vision flickers and he shakes his head, then winces as a sharp pain lances through him. It’s quickly followed by another, then another, to the point where he’s doubled over in pain, gripping his head in his hands.

When he sits up, the room is gone. He’s back in his perch at SHIELD, long before it all went to shit, looking down at Selvig and Fury as they talk about the tesseract.

“Agent Barton, report.”

He gets up and rappels down the long rope, trying to read the expression on Fury’s face. “I gave you this detail so you could keep a close eye on things,” Fury says.

“Well, I see better from a distance.” Clint walks next to him, staring around. This can’t be real.

“Have you seen anything that might set this thing off?”

Around them, scientists hurry between stations, looking at the pulsing tesseract with trepidation. “No one’s come or gone,” Clint says, the words coming naturally. Like he’s really back here. “And Selvig’s clean. No contacts, no IMs. If there’s any tampering, sir, it wasn’t this end.”

Fury looks at him sharply. “At this end?”

“Yeah. The Cube is a doorway to the other end of space, right? Doors open from both sides.”

In front of him, the tesseract rumbles, then activates. Clint stares at the portal, a sinking feeling in his stomach. He doesn’t want to do this again. He doesn’t want to remember this.

He doesn’t really hear Fury order Loki to drop the spear, but his body reacts automatically to the danger, shoving the director aside. Loki fights, throwing knives and spears and bolts of tesseract fire until he and Clint come face to face. “You have heart,” he says to Clint, gripping his gun hand, and that fucking scepter touches his chest.

The blue washes over everything, and the scene skips. Suddenly he’s on the Quinjet, firing arrows into the helicarrier, desperately trying to stop himself and somehow still not in control. Then he’s on the catwalk, fighting Natasha.

She’s better than him. She’s always been better than him and he can only pray that this time is enough, that she’ll beat him here as well. He tries to pull his punches, tries to miss with his arrows, tries to step right into her fists.

But this fight is different. She’s different. It’s not the one he remembers. She doesn’t take any of the openings he gives her, doesn’t read his telegraphed punches. She takes every single hit he dishes, and he takes none of hers.

They end up on their backs, Clint’s arm around Natasha’s throat. “Nat, please,” he begs, trying to shift so he’s not pulling so hard. “Nat, come on. You can get out of this. I know you can. Hit me on the head.”

She doesn’t respond. He forces his ankle loose, tries to leverage it so she can get her foot underneath and flip them. Something she’s done a million times before. But she doesn’t. Instead, she takes a soft gasping breath, and then goes limp in his arms.

“Natasha!”

He lets go and flips her over. “Nat. No, no, no, no. Come on, Nat. Breathe. Breathe for me. Come on.”

Her lifeless eyes stare up at him, cold and accusing. Then she vanishes from underneath him and he’s suddenly kneeling on the roof in New York, shooting arrows at the Chitauri. “Stark, you got a lot of strays sniffing your tail,” he says into the comms as he shoots.

“Hawkeye!” Nat shouts and he turns, seeing Loki follow her up and down the streets. “A little help?”

He turns and fires, but Loki catches the arrow and smirks at him, tossing it onto Nat’s ride before it ignites. Then he jumps, and he lands on the ground next to Cap and Thor, easily dispatching them with blows from his scepter. Tony swoops in for a shot and Loki fires at him too. The armor blasts from his body and he falls to the ground unprotected.

“No,” Clint moans, reaching for another arrow. “No, that isn’t what happened!”

Loki turns and smiles at him. “Isn’t it, Barton?” Then suddenly he’s there, his fingers in Clint’s hair and a nasty smile stretching his mouth. “Are you sure the other world isn’t just a dream?”

The vision dissolves into smoke and Clint is back in his cell, hunched over with his forehead pressed against the floor. “That’s not what happened,” he says again, his voice cracking. “It’s not. It’s not what happened. We won. That’s not what happened.”

There’s still blood dripping down his back. He can smell it in the air, can practically taste it on his tongue. He’s cold. So cold. _Blood loss,_ he thinks, and wonders if they’re going to do anything about it.

“Ah, _ptichka_ ,” someone says softly.

Mikhail.

Clint can barely lift his head up, but he tries anyway. “That’s not how it happened,” he croaks. “We won.”

“I know,” Mikhail says soothingly. “I am sorry.”

He helps Clint sit up the rest of the way, ignoring the blood that soaks into his nice suit. Then he holds up another bottle of water. “Here.”

Clint turns his head. “No, please, sir. I don’t want to see any more.”

“Shhh, Agent Barton. The water is safe.” He turns Clint’s chin until they’re looking at each other. “Everything you take from me is safe. I am safe. We have made a promise not to lie to each other. I need you to trust me.”

Clint does _not_ trust him, but he opens his mouth anyway. He’s so thirsty.

Mikhail helps him drink. When the bottle is empty he sets Clint to balance on his own, then slowly steps away. “I must leave,” he says. “Unless you have changed your mind about sharing.”

He swallows, then shakes his head. He can’t. He has to hold on.

Mikhail’s mouth presses into a thin line. “Until next time, then.”

The clock ticks to twenty hours. He’s so tired. He shouldn’t be this tired. He’s stayed awake for longer times with SHIELD. Twenty hours should be a walk in the park.

_But those times you were fresh,_ Nat whispers into his ear. _You haven’t properly slept in days, Clint, and they’re not feeding you enough. You’re not going to be able to hold on._

“Don’t,” he whispers back. “Don’t do that to me. Please.”

He needs her support. He needs his team. He’s not going to make it through without them.

The pain shoots through his head again and the room dissolves. He’s standing with his team, laughing about lifting Thor’s hammer, and then suddenly Ultron is there. But not the first Ultron, the one that had been mangled and bleeding oil. It’s the one from Sokovia, the one that had set the robots on them. He monologues about the futility of humankind even as he literally tears Clint’s team apart.

“And you,” he says, facing Clint. “The last Avenger standing.”

“This isn’t how it happened,” Clint says, drawing his last arrow. “I remember this.”

“Are you sure?” Ultron asks, waving a hand. His robots step forward, pulser hands aimed at Clint. “Are you really, really sure?”

“Yes,” Clint says, and he lets the arrow fly. The room explodes and he covers his face. Then he’s in Sokovia, in the building with Wanda, and she’s looking at him with a terrified gaze. “Hey, hey,” he says, reaching towards her. “You okay?”

“This is all our fault,” she says desperately.

“Look at me.” She does, brown eyes meeting his. “It’s your fault, it’s everyone’s fault, who cares? Are you up for this? Look, I just need to know, because the city—”

He doesn’t get to finish. An Ultron-bot bursts through the ceiling and lands on top of her, crushing her skull instantly. “No!” Clint screams, charging at the bot. “NO!”

“She served her purpose,” Ultron-bot says, easily fending him off. “Your sentiment makes you weak, Agent Barton. Hawkeye.” He smirks. “What is your purpose, I wonder?”

“What?”

Ultron grabs him and takes him high, way up above the city. “Don’t struggle,” he says, watching Clint kick in his grasp. “I wouldn’t want to drop you.”

“What the fuck do you want,” Clint snarls, stilling in his grasp. Ultron is right, he wouldn’t want to fall from this height. He’d never survive that.

“I want you to _see_ ,” Ultron hisses. “Look below you, Hawkeye. Look at your team. A god. A monster. A genius, although I loathe calling him that. A super soldier. An assassin far more skilled than you could ever hope to be.” He grips Clint’s throat and raises him up until they’re face to face. “What is your purpose on this team? You are nothing to them. A mere human. You take one hit, you’re out. You are destined to fail. You are _useless_.”

Clint claws at the iron hand. “Fuck…off,” he chokes, driving his foot into Ultron’s ribs. The robot sighs, then drops him.

He plummets towards the city, arms pinwheeling. “Stark! Thor! Anyone, help!”

“Don’t bother,” Tony says. “Let him fall. We don’t need him.”

_What?_

He screams as the ground rushes towards him. The impact leaves a small crater, and he feels every single bone shatter before the world dissolves and he’s back in his cell, still screaming.

_We don’t need him. We don’t need him._

The words play in his head again and again. Clint covers his ears but it doesn’t help. “You do need me,” he says. “I’m part of the team. I’m one of you.”

Laura’s hands rub over his shoulder. “They don’t need you,” she murmurs, and he shudders, because she’s not even supposed to be here. She needs to be gone. She’s not safe here.

The hallucinations continue. He winds up on his side again, breathing heavily, staring at the clock as the seconds tick by.

_Do you understand the game now?_

He isn’t sure. Is knowing how long it’s been worse than not knowing? He can’t do shit about it either way.

At twenty-four hours, the hallucinations start to taper off again. Clint rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling. There are stalactites up there. Or is it the other one? He can never remember. It doesn’t matter anyway, because he blinks and they vanish, only to be replaced with columns of bats. It’s better that way, honestly. He likes bats.

His eyes slip closed. He’s so tired. He just needs a few minutes.

A jolt of electricity brings him screaming back to consciousness. “No sleep,” says the guard, smiling sadistically at him.

“You’re a dick,” Clint says, and gets tasered again for his trouble.

“Kneel.”

He pushes up to his knees. “I’m going to kill you,” he says to the guard. “Slowly and dramatically. With your own fucking weapons.”

The taser stick hits him again and he doubles over, wincing. “Kneel,” the guard orders. “No talk.”

Clint grinds his teeth shut against his instinctual response and gets to his knees one more time. He can do this. He _can_. He’s Clint Motherfucking Barton. He just needs to hold out long enough for a SHIELD rescue. He can do it. He’s not useless. He’s _not_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to anyone who wanted Loki to be real, but I’ve got other plans for him in a different story. :D hopefully the other characters are mean enough to make up for it!


	18. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lukas is an asshole.

Forty-seven hours. It’s been forty-seven hours. Clint stares at the clock, letting the redness burn his retinas. Forty-seven hours. Longer technically since he’s slept, but that’s how long it’s been since this started. He knows there’s been more doses of the green stuff, and more visits from Lukas. His entire back feels like it’s been flayed open from that fucking cane. It probably has. Mikhail brought him another bottle of water once. Twice? He’s not sure. He’s losing too much time between the hallucinations and the beatings. The floor underneath him is a solid crust of dried blood.

“Tell you what,” Lukas drawls, leaning against the wall. Clint jerks at the sound of his voice. “If you can recite your English alphabet backwards without a mistake, I will let you sleep.”

“Fuck you,” Clint says. He can’t stop trembling. The chains are rattling. His whole body fucking hurts and he’s still coming down an earlier dosage of that green crap, which means he’s flinching at every single motion and sound.

“A whole hour,” he offers. “No interruptions. I will even let you lay down.”

Clint considers for half a second, then shakes his head. “I’m not…playing your…fucking games.”

“No?” Lukas crosses his arms, then drops one to the cane dangling from his hip. “Would you prefer this instead? You do make such lovely sounds. I would not mind.”

The threat takes too long to break through his sluggish brain. “No,” Clint says again. “I don’t…”

“Then say it for me. If you get it right, you sleep. If you get it wrong, I will hit you.”

His _my-request-is-now-an-order_ voice is in full force. Clint flinches, although he’s not entirely sure why. He licks his dry lips and trembles harder. “Z. Y. X. W.”

He knows this. He _knows_ this. He used to say it all the time as a kid. Barney had always told him that he’d better know if it he got pulled over, because the officer would make him say it. It took him until he was fifteen to realize Barney was a fucking liar. He doesn’t miss Barney. Brothers shouldn’t do what he did.

What did he do? Something. He did something. Clint always does something. Barney always does—did?—things too. Never with him. Always leaving him behind. He’s not a kid. Why doesn’t Barney ever take him anywhere? He can rob banks with the best of them.

“Agent Barton,” Lukas says, and Clint jerks back to the moment.

“V,” he says, then stops. He has to say it forward in his head. It takes him a second to realize he’s humming the fucking tune of it out loud. “U. T. S. R.” He snorts a little at that, picking up his heavy head to look at Mikhail.

No. Lukas. Mikhail isn’t here. He left Clint to this man. Shouldn’t be surprised. People always leave him. Laura. Tony. Natasha. _We don’t need him._

Who does he know named Laura? No one.

“It’s like USSR,” he explains the joke, then cries out as the cane whips across his outstretched arms.

“Incorrect,” Lukas says. “Start from the beginning, Agent. Or the end, I suppose.”

“Circles don’t have beginnings,” Clint informs him. “And that was supposed to be funny.”

He means the USSR thing, not the circle, but he gets hit either way. “Start again.”

“Z. Y. X.” Well, that part he knows. He tries to picture the alphabet dancing along in front of him, but then he gets distracted. “W?”

“Keep going.”

“U. T. S.” Like UPS, but not. Was there a UPS in 1965? “How do you get packages?” he asks, suddenly curious. “Who delivers them?”

“Incorrect,” Lukas says. Three more hits in rapid succession. He shouts in pain. “Start again.”

“Z. Y. X. W. V.” He stops, then remembers the packages. “U! T. S.” Something else was funny. Something Russian. “R?” No, that’s pirates. Pirates say R. Russian starts with R.

Lukas smiles like a shark, all teeth and no warmth. “Yes.”

Win for Russian pirates. What’s next. “Q. T.”

“Incorrect.”

“Is not,” Clint says. “It’s a gas station.”

He gets hit anyway. “Start again.”

Clint grits his teeth. He can do this. He knows this. He’s not a genius, he’s no Tony Stark, but he can say his fucking alphabet. “Z. Y. X. W.” He falls into a micro sleep for a second, then jerks himself back awake. “V! U. T. S. R.”

The shark smile. Clint shudders in fear. Or cold. Are they really different these days? “Q.” Not T. “P.” Not a gas station. _Don’t fuck it up, Barton_.”O.”

He debates what comes next for a long time, then finally settles on N, for Natasha. It must be right, because Lukas doesn’t hit him. Then M. Another micro sleep hits him. This one Lukas slaps him out of. “Stay awake, Agent Barton. If you sleep, you forfeit the game.”

“L.”

“Yes.”

“K.” He’s crying, he realizes, and he’s not sure why. “J.” J like Jarvis. God, he misses his team. Misses Jarvis. Well, technically it’s Friday now, since Jarvis became Vision. And Vision is dead. Isn’t he dead?

No, he came back. Right?

No. He died in Wakanda. Clint wasn’t there. House arrest. Shooting arrows with—

No. He doesn’t have a house. He shoots by himself.

_Think, Clint._ “I…”

He has to go forward to go backwards, a thought that makes him laugh hysterically for a second before he can get himself under control. It’s like the stones. They had to go back to go forward, go backwards to bring the others into the future— _no stop you can’t give them that don’t say anything_

“There’s no such thing as time travel,” he says aloud.

“Incorrect.” Five hits to his arms. Blood drips down his skin. “Start again. This is your last chance, Agent.”

Fucking hell. _Stop getting distracted, Barton_. “Z. No. Wait.” He looks at Lukas. “Which direction am I going?”

“Backwards.” Lukas is smiling. Clint doesn’t know what the joke is.

“Z.” He closes his eyes, then opens them again, lest Lukas think he’s falling asleep. “Y. X. W. V. U. T. S.” What comes after S? Something. Something starts with S. What else starts with S? No. Stay focused. “R. Q. P. O. N. M.” He’s taking a long time in between letters, but Lukas doesn’t seem to mind. He’s slowly drawing the cane over the welts he’s made, smiling every time Clint winces from the sting. “L. K…J. I?”

No response. Must be right. What comes after I?

J. No. He’s going backwards. “H. G. F.” Sounds like a CIA acronym. _Stop thinking about other letters._ “E. D.”

He laughs again, remembering what Tony said to Loki in the tower. Performance issues. Fucking glowstick of Destiny. He should have just killed Loki the second he jumped from that fucking portal.

_No,_ Loki hisses in his ear. _You liked what I did to you. Admit it. You liked being my vanguard._

Clint shakes his head hard. “Get out of my head,” he hisses, then jerks up, afraid Lukas will make him start again. But he didn’t hear, or he did and he doesn’t care. “C. B. A.”

He made it. He got them all. He’s pretty sure they’re right. Clint smiles up at Lukas, proud of himself. Unbreakable. That’s him. Like that one Netflix show about the bunker girls. Bruce made him watch that. Clint secretly liked it. He needs a theme song like that. “I did it,” he tells Lukas.

“Yes, you did,” Lukas says. “And I keep my promises.”

He loosens the chain around Clint’s neck, the one keeping him high up on his knees. They’d added that around thirty hours, when he’d fallen over and refused to get up again. Clint gratefully sinks to the ground, bending over until his forehead touches his hands. Then he collapses onto his side and stares at that fucking clock. “An hour?” he asks. It’s not going to put a dent in his exhaustion, but it’s better than anything else he’s been offered lately.

“An hour,” Lukas confirms. Clint’s eyes immediately slip closed, and he’s unconscious within seconds, God it feels so good—

A boot kicks him in the side. “Wake up, Agent Barton.”

“No…” he moans, rolling with the force of the kick. “No more, please.”

“It’s been an hour,” Lukas says. “Time to get up.”

He covers his face. He’s crying again. Why is he crying?

“Mikhail,” he moans, and Lukas kicks him again. “Make him stop. Please.”

“Mikhail is not here,” Lukas says. “I am here. Get up. Do not make me ask a third time.”

The cane whips against the soles of his bare feet and Clint shrieks, pushing up to his knees so quickly that the room spins. “I’m up,” he gasps, holding his hands out to Lukas. “I’m up.”

The clock says forty-seven. Clint stares at the numbers, then at his tormenter. “That was an hour?”

“It was,” Lukas says. “As I promised.”

But it was forty-seven when he let him down. Clint _knows_ that. Doesn’t he? “But I—”

The cane strikes him again. “Are you accusing me of lying?”

“No!” He cowers as much as the chain will let him. “No! I’m sorry!”

Another strike. “I do not take such offenses lightly, Agent Barton.”

“I’m not! You’re not! It was an hour!” He curls over as the cane strikes again and again. He apologizes in English, then in Russian, then in Spanish, then in something that he’s not even sure is intelligible.

“Shhh…” Lukas says, leaning down and touching his hair. It’s limp and greasy, matted with dirt and blood. “It is alright, Agent. I believe you.”

“It was an hour,” Clint says, trembling under the gentle fingers. “It _was_. It was an hour. 60 minutes. 3600 seconds. Z. X. Y. 47. No, that’s wrong. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

The words are just spilling out of him and that’s dangerous, too dangerous, he can’t control his mouth and he’s going to say something wrong. He needs to sleep, Jesus Christ, last time he was awake this long was after Loki crawled into his head and he couldn’t sleep because it was too blue everything was blue and green and those stupid green eyes just watched him while he knelt down and made him scream inside himself when those cold fingers touched him he hates being touched he’s too vulnerable enemies everywhere in front behind to the side where the fuck is his team where’s Natasha why haven’t they come for him by now

“They won’t come,” he tells Lukas. Awareness seeps back into him slowly, replacing the cold of the panic, and he realizes that he’s still on his knees. His forehead is pressed against Lukas’s thigh while gentle fingers stroke Clint’s hair. “They won’t. Not for me.” _We don’t need him._

“Who won’t come?” Lukas asks gently.

“I don’t know what you want.” Clint tilts up and looks at his face. “Please just tell me what you want.”

“Who won’t come for you?”

“My team. They don’t know when I am.”

“ _When_ you are?”

Bad territory. Stop talking. “Where.” Time travel isn’t real. “It’s 1965. They’re dead. She’s dead.”

Lukas tilts Clint’s head back, snapping his fingers in front of him to make him focus. “Where are the agents? Where did they take the physicist?”

“What?”

“We just want to know where our property is, Agent Barton. That’s all.” His voice is so calm. So reasonable.

“I don’t know,” Clint says. “I’m here, I’m not there, I’m here with you, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.”

A disappointed sigh. “Agent.”

Clint curls into him. “Please don’t.”

“Sit up, Agent.”

He does. He pulls away from the contact and blinks up at Lukas with bleary eyes. “Why?”

Lukas takes something from his pocket and kneels down, undoing the chains around his wrists. The handcuffs stay on. Then he unchains Clint’s feet and tosses the ankle shackles to the side.

“We will try again later,” he says, as Clint is staring uncomprehendingly at his suddenly semi-unbound hands. This is not good. Change isn’t good. Where’s Mikhail, he needs Mikhail, Mikhail brings him water and doesn’t hurt him and Mikhail is safe.

Lukas opens the door and steps out, but he doesn’t close it behind him. Clint blinks at the open door, then starts crawling towards it. Open door. Freedom. Out.

As soon as his shaking hands touch the threshold though, a boot comes out of nowhere and kicks him back into the room. Clint lands on his back and wheezes, trying to roll away.

“Where you going?” someone asks in a thick accent.

It’s another man, one with no left hand. It’s familiar and its not and Clint stares at the stump for a long time until his fevered mind makes the connection. “You!” He pushes up to his knees and grins at the guy, an effect that is probably ruined by his bloodshot eyes and shaking body. “How’s your arm? Threaten any kids lately?”

A hand slams into his head. “Fucking smartass,” another guy says. He pushes Clint over with his boot and presses it against Clint’s ribs. “We’ll see how smart you are when we’re done here.”

“Hope you weren’t left-handed,” Clint says to the one armed guy, pushing his hands against the boot. Icy rage is flooding into him, combating the exhaustion for a second. “Or I hope you were, actually. Serves you right.”

“You’re gonna regret doing that to him,” the man hisses, leaning in close. He keeps his boot on Clint’s chest and turns to the door, calling in several other HYDRA thugs. Then he looks down. “Get your fucking hands off my boot.”

“Make me,” Clint snarls, pushing harder. He regrets that a little bit a moment later, when the guy rips his foot free and kicks him in the head. Things go fuzzy for a bit after that, but he winds up on his back with his arms held overhead and his feet pinned down, surrounded by by seven HYDRA uniforms.

“Come on,” he says, pulling on his arms. “Hit me and get it over with, I’ve got shit to do.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” says the man. He reaches for his belt buckle, and Clint’s mouth suddenly goes dry. “I’m sure we can keep you occupied for a few hours.”


	19. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The panic is like a monster in his chest and he can barely breathe through the weight of it. He’s hyperventilating, his cracked rib screaming in pain. “No,” he whispers, eyes fixed on Lukas and the blowtorch. “Oh God, Lukas, please don’t. Please.”

Clint’s not stupid. He knows what’s about to happen. They’d talked about it at SHIELD as part of his RTI training. Sat him down in a room with a projector and talked about bodies and physiological responses and how to compartmentalize. He’d nodded his way through the training and filed it under “things unlikely to happen to me.” And in fifteen years of working for them, it never had.

Still, knowing doesn’t make it better. Training or not, he is not in a good mental place to deal with this right now. He can’t let this happen.

“You got quiet,” someone says. One of his usual guards. Clint recognizes his beady eyes. “Finally learn to shut up?”

“Fuck you guys,” Clint pants, pulling at his arms. “Get your fucking hands off me.”

“Spread his legs,” the guard instructs, and he kneels down between them. He slides a hand up Clint’s thigh. “You’re going to like this,” he murmurs. “We’re going to _make_ you like it.”

Pain spikes his head, leftover from his previous dosage, and he groans. He can’t go into a memory. Not now. He needs to stay present.

He loses the battle. He’s sitting on the windowsill in a hotel room, looking down onto the crowded street below. France, maybe? He looks around, notes the decorations, sees the formal suit and tie he’s wearing. Yep. France. Their second mission together, exactly seven months after he’d brought her in.

“Hey,” Nat says, leaning next to him. She’s wearing a blue dress and she looks fucking gorgeous. His breath catches a little at the sight of her. “What are you looking at?”

“Just checking out the party down there,” Clint says, trying very hard not to stare at her chest. She notices anyway, and grins at him.

“Happy New Year,” she murmurs into his ear, pressing close to him. “Can you unzip me?”

“Huh? Oh. Sure.” He reaches over and unzips the dress. She steps out and lets it pool on the floor underneath her.

Clint immediately snaps his head back around to stare out the window. “You’re naked,” he says to the glass, determinedly not looking at her reflection. “Why are you naked?”

“That’s what happens when you unzip a lady’s dress, Clint,” she says softly. He can hear the laughter in her voice. “I assumed you knew things like that.”

“Underwear exists.”

“Underwear ruins the lines, sweetheart.”

“Oh.” He clenches his hands on his thigh as she dances fingertips over his neck. “Natasha, what are you doing?”

“Trying to seduce you. Is it working?”

“No,” he lies.

She grips his hair and tilts his head back until it’s almost painful. “Shame,” she breathes, gently kissing his lips. “Guess I’ll have to try harder then.”

They never make it to the bed. She pulls him away from the window by his tie, then gently strips him out of his clothes. He fucks her against the wall while her fingernails leave scratches in his back. She sighs his name as she comes, and he follows not long after.

“That was nice,” she says, leaning forward to bite his ear. “Shame that won’t happen again.”

“What?” he asks, but her hands are already on his neck and twisting sharply.

There’s a crack and a pain in his head and he opens his eyes to find himself staring at the clock in the cell. The guard is pulling back for another slap and Clint just lets his head roll with it. “That’s not what happened,” he says. They’d fucked each other in France, yes, but it had been after a deadly mission, the kind of sex where you’re just so elated to be alive that you need another person to ground you in reality. They’d been all teeth and tongues and desperation, not cold seduction and neck snapping.

“This is happening,” the guard says, misunderstanding him. He moves his wrist and Clint realizes with a jolt that there are already two fingers inside him. The pain of it hits a second later, and he has to clench his jaw to keep from groaning. “And there’s nothing you can do about it, so just stop fighting.”

The words trigger something in Clint, the exhaustion burning away in a surge of rage and adrenaline. He pulls all four limbs hard into himself, slipping out of the grasps of the agents holding him down. Then he kicks the guard in the face with both feet before flipping over and shoving himself upwards. Pain blares through him like an alarm but he ignores it, bolting for the still-open door. The agents shout and scramble after him.

He runs, feeling the ground sloping up under his feet. He’s got no plan and no time to make one. This probably isn’t even going to work, but he sure as fuck isn’t gonna lay there and let them _touch_ him.

There’s another agent coming down the hallway. He’s got his nose buried in some papers, but at the shouting and commotion, he looks up. Clint sprints directly at him, a vague idea forming in his fevered mind.

“What the—” he starts, and Clint slams into him, ripping the revolver from his holster. He barely manages to keep his feet as he spins and fires off all six shots at the approaching guards behind him.

He drops five of them with headshots. His last one goes a little low, hitting the one-armed guy in the throat rather than the head. But six bodies drop to the floor, and he takes half a second to grin at his marksmanship. Even in the throes of severe sleep deprivation and on some seriously weird drugs, he’s still fucking awesome.

Clint hands the smoking gun back to the confused agent. “Thanks,” he says, swaying dangerously. As badly as he wants to, he’s not going to make it any further than this.

“I…” the agent starts, then he drops his files and grabs Clint as he collapses.

Another set of hands lands on him. The last guard standing. Clint doesn’t recognize him. He snaps something to File Guy, who turns and runs the other direction. The guard shoves Clint over onto his back. “Those were my friends,” he snarls, his voice rough with rage and sorrow. “You fucking American bastard. Those were my _friends_!”

“Should’ve kept their hands to themselves,” Clint snarls back, kicking out.

The man’s face twists and he kicks back, hitting Clint in the ribs. Something cracks under his foot and Clint chokes with the pain, curling up to protect his midsection.

He loses some time, he thinks, because by the time he can breathe again, Lukas is standing over him with an irritated look on his face. “Agent Barton.”

“Dickface,” Clint manages.

“Trying to run again?”

“You…left the door…open…”

“Hm.” Lukas looks up at the bodies, which are slowly being cleared away by other agents. “Natov.”

Last Guard Standing steps forward. “Sir?”

“Bring me a blowtorch.”

Natov gets a nasty grin on his face and starts jogging up the hallway. Clint shudders a little bit on the floor. A blowtorch does not mean good things for him.

“Tell me what I want to know,” Lukas says, “and I won’t let them touch you. You can sleep.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“Stop lying to me, Agent.”

Clint’s vision blurs. “Not lying.”

Time skips again, or maybe he microsleeps, because suddenly Natov is back with some friends, and he’s holding a small blowtorch. “Here, sir,” he says, handing it to Lukas.

Lukas fires it a few times, then puts his hand on Clint’s ankle. Natov holds Clint’s handcuffed arms above his head with an iron grip. Two others settle at his right leg, shoving it down onto the floor. “Agent,” comes a warning voice, and Clint hears the unspoken threat behind it.

The panic is like a monster in his chest and he can barely breathe through the weight of it. He’s hyperventilating, his cracked rib screaming in pain. “No,” he whispers, eyes fixed on Lukas and the blowtorch. “Oh God, Lukas, please don’t. Please.”

“You are making me do this,” Lukas says softly. “If you tell me, you can make it stop. You are in control here.”

A hysterical laugh slips past his lips. He’s not in control. He’s never been in less control of anything.

_Just tell them something,_ part of his mind rages. _Anything._

But he can’t. There is a woman in his mind, and three kids, and he can’t remember why but he has to keep them safe. He can’t give in.

“So be it,” Lukas sighs. He turns on the blowtorch and aims it at the bottom of Clint’s right foot.

A scream rips from him, so loud and harsh he can almost feel his vocal chords shredding underneath it. It goes on and on and on until he has to breathe, but the pain is too much and his vision is covered with dark spots _holy Jesus fucking Christ someone make him stop make him stop please_

The fire turns off but the pain continues, a horrific throbbing that radiates from his foot all the way up his leg. He collapses back onto the ground, having arched his back up from the pain, and locks eyes with Lukas over his heaving chest. “Please don’t, please, please, no more,” he sobs, trying to pull his arms down, or his legs in, anything to get away from Lukas and his blowtorch.

“Is there anything you would like to say to me?”

Clint sobs again, his fingers desperately scrabbling at the air. Then there’s a rush of flames, and an impossible heat to his left foot, and another piercing scream is clawing its way up his throat. It goes on forever, burning away the exhaustion and rational thought until there is nothing but a scalding red path of agony in his mind.

Finally, Lukas pulls away. “Take him back. Watch him this time. If he gets out again, I will hold you responsible.”

He stands up and gives Clint a dispassionate look. “You can stop this at any time, Agent Barton. You know how.”

Finally released from the hands holding him down, Clint curls into himself. There’s a strange whining sound in the air, and it takes him a long second to realize it’s coming from him.

“Get up,” Natov snaps. “Up!” He kicks Clint again.

“Please,” Clint whispers brokenly.

He kneels and winds his fingers in Clint’s hair, dragging him upwards. “You killed my friends.”

Clint grabs at his wrist. Somewhere in his frantic mind he thinks maybe he should apologize, or beg for mercy, but the look in the guard’s eye says he’s not going to listen to either one. So he just latches onto the wrist and tries to remember how his lungs are supposed to work. “Let’s go,” the guard says in disgust, shoving him down again. “Now.”

Somehow, Clint manages to push up to his hands and knees. It’s a slow and horrible crawl back to his cell. He has to drag his feet behind, even barely trying to curl them under makes him retch with pain. When he finally crosses the threshold, Natov kicks him in the hip and he collapses onto his back.

“No,” he says weakly, but that’s all he can get out. Natov secures his arms overhead, then shoves his fingers in Clint’s mouth.

“Suck.”

He bites instead, which earns him a slap to the face that makes his ears ring. “I said _suck_ ,” the guard orders again. “Or we’re not using anything at all, and I can promise that’s gonna be more painful for you than me.”

Clint stares at the ceiling as tears blur his eyes. Can’t run. Can’t fight. Can’t resist. Can’t even stand up now. He’s fucking useless.

_We don’t need him._

He opens his mouth. Lets Natov probe around on his tongue, obediently gets them wet. Tries not to shout as those same fingers press into his ass, burning and stretching. Tries to fall into better memories as the fingers are replaced by something bigger, something worse.

Tries not to think at all as the sounds draw other interested parties, and then he’s right back where he started—only this time, there’s no running away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is what happens when I lay awake in bed at night and think, "I bet I can make this worse..."


	20. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The howl gives way to a sob , then another, and then Clint’s doubled over with the force of his own despair, desperately trying to keep himself together. There are too many cracks, too many splinters in his shell. He has to make it stop. He has to say it. He can’t do this anymore.

“Hawkeye,” Loki whispers in his ear. Clint flinches, even though he tries not to. “How are you feeling, Hawkeye?”

“Shitty,” he slurs. “Coulson. Coulson, you gotta pull me out. I can’t shoot like this.”

He’s shivering hard. He passed out twice during their…during _that_ , and they threw ice water on him both times to shock him awake. The room stinks of sweat and sex. Or maybe it’s him. He can’t tell. He can still feel them, though. Feel their fingers on his skin and in his mouth and in his—

No. Put it away. It happened to someone else, not him.

“Coulson,” he moans, slamming his head into his hands. “Come on, man.”

He’s back on his knees. This time he’s grateful for the chain around his neck, because at least it means he can’t accidentally fall onto his feet. God, his feet. He’s been through some nasty shit as a SHIELD agent, but this is definitely in the top five. Maybe the top three. The pain is so constant and overwhelming that he can barely breathe. It wars with the exhaustion, leaving him with moments of horrible lucidity in between the hallucinations where all he can think about is how much it fucking _hurts_.

There is a clock in front of him too, and the numbers say sixty, but he can’t remember why that’s important. Things keep flickering in front of it anyway. He sees Steve and Tony talking before they start fighting each other. Banner smiles at him, then turns and punches an alien monster that swallows him whole. He sees himself, fighting at the airport, slammed into the ground by the Black Panther, who then claws his defenseless body to shreds.

T’Challa ducked his arrows too, he suddenly remembers. Maybe Clint’s not as good as he thinks he is. Or maybe T’Challa has super powers. The guy wears a cat suit. It wouldn’t be surprising.

A cool hand touches his forehead and he nearly falls over. “Coulson,” he says again, rolling his head to the side. “About time.”

“Who is Coulson?”

Clint blinks. Mikhail is standing in front of him, holding a bowl in one hand. There’s an instant rush of relief in seeing him instead of Lukas. “Hey,” he whispers. “Where you been?”

“I was called away briefly.” Mikhail loosens the chain around his neck, allowing Clint to relax a little more. “Lukas informed me of what happened, but I would like to hear it from you.”

He shudders. “They…they…”

“They what?”

Another shudder. He leans forward, pressing his head against Mikhail’s thigh. Mikhail is safe. “They…” He can’t make himself say it, but he makes a wild gesture and the other man seems to get the idea. There’s a low, disgusted sound. Clint tilts his head up, but Mikhail isn’t looking at him. He’s staring at the door, his features twisted in irritation. He says something very unkind in Russian, then kneels next to Clint. “It will not happen again,” he promises.

“Okay,” Clint says, because he believes him. Mikhail wouldn’t lie.

“I brought you some food,” Mikhail says. “Do you think you can eat?”

Clint shrugs.

Mikhail sits on the floor, then rearranges Clint so he’s sitting on his ass, back to Mikhail’s chest. The open wounds flare in pain as soon as he makes contact, but it’s nothing compared to his feet, and it’s better than being on his knees. His eyes are burning dully and his head is pounding. God, he’s tired. More than tired. He feels empty. Like one of Tony’s suits.

“You are very strong,” Mikhail says, offering a spoonful of whatever is in the bowl. Clint looks at it for a second, then leans forward and takes it. The remnants of his dignity want to argue about feeding himself, but he’s really too tired to give a shit. “But I still think you are being needlessly stubborn.”

“Hmmm.” Another bite. “Part of the job.”

“Is it?” Mikhail sounds faintly amused. “Full marks for you, then.”

They eat in silence for a while, then Clint says, “I think he has superpowers.”

“Who?”

“T’Challa. I think he has super powers.” He looks at the spoon. “Or he's a cat. What is this stuff?”

Mikhail rubs his back soothingly. “It’s food, Agent. Just eat it.”

He should probably question it, but he doesn’t. If it’s poison, all the better for him. They’ve already made him see his worst nightmares. Death would probably be a step up from the horror show in his head.

Vaguely, he thinks there’s a reason he should stay alive. But he can’t remember and so he doesn’t dwell on it. Thoughts are hard. Slippery. Like fish. Silver fish in a creek. “I went fishing once,” he says. “Me and Steve. Thought it would be fun.”

“Was it?”

“No.” He presses his hands to his eyes. “Fish are wet.”

The door to the cell slams open and Clint twitches, leaning into Mikhail despite the flare of pain. Mikhail won’t let them touch again. He promised.

There’s a shuffling of bodies through the door. Two of them are handcuffed. The other one is Lukas. He’s got his fucking cane in one hand and a gun in the other. No one else comes in, but Clint sees Natov out in the hallway. He shudders and looks away.

“Oh my God,” someone says, and he refocuses on the handcuffed people. They both look vaguely familiar, but he doesn’t know why. “Barton? Is that you?” A woman. Blond hair.

He blinks a couple times. “Who’re you?”

“Jesus.” That’s a man’s voice. “What the hell are you bastards doing to him?”

There’s more sounds of struggling, then Lukas says, “On your knees, Agent Barton.”

Mikhail moves and so Clint is forced to move too, shuffling to avoid any pressure on the bottom of his feet. He gets back on his aching knees and looks up at Lukas. “I don’t want to play any more games.”

“We are not playing, Agent. Not right now.” He gestures at the other two. “Recognize them?”

He doesn’t. He thinks he should, but he doesn’t, so he just shakes his head quickly and tries not to throw up at the motion.

“They are more SHIELD agents,” Lukas says. “They were looking for you.”

Clint raises his head a little. They’re gagged now, the two agents, but they’re staring at him with intense concern. A little bloom of warmth starts in his chest. _They got my message. They came._

“Tell me what I want to know,” Lukas says, cocking his gun and pressing it to the woman’s head, “or I will kill them.”

Clint blinks. “What? Wait, no. Don’t.” The panic is back, settling into him like an old friend. Torture, he can take. He’ll gamble with his own life. But he doesn’t want to be responsible for another death. Tears well up in his eyes again. “Please, Lukas.”

“I am tired of waiting, Agent. Tell me now.”

The woman shakes her head at him. Either _don’t tell him_ or _don’t let him kill me._ Clint’s not sure. He opens his mouth, then closes it. Something. He has to say something. He can’t let this happen again.

“Last chance. Where are they taking the physicist?”

The woman looks confused, like she was expecting a different question. Clint tries to gather his disconnected thoughts. It’s so hard to think through the fog in his mind. _New York_ is on the tip of his tongue, but he can’t say that. He knows he can’t. “I…”

“Too long, Agent.” The gun fires and Clint flinches as blood sprays over him. The woman topples to the floor.

He screams. Not even really a scream, just a wordless howl of frustration and anger that bursts from him in a tidal wave. The man is yelling too, unintelligible words spilling from behind his gag. He tries to get up, but the guards quickly rush in and hold him in place. Lukas gives him a disdainful look and turns to Clint. “I’m sorry you made me do that,” he says softly. “I did not want to.”

The howl gives way to a sob , then another, and then Clint’s doubled over with the force of his own despair, desperately trying to keep himself together. There are too many cracks, too many splinters in his shell. He has to make it stop. He has to say it. He can’t do this anymore.

_Lie to them,_ Natasha hisses in his head. _Fucking lie._

Can he lie? Will they believe him?

They might, at this point. They might not. It’s a chance he has to take.

But not New York. He can’t. Somewhere else. Rock and hard place. What’s going to cause the least amount of damage to the timestream? Where else was SHIELD in 1965? He remembers learning about it. He knew at one point. _SHIELD History 101. Standard introduction class._ SHIELD had three major bases in the US at this time. New York, which he can’t give up. The Mojave Desert, which he can’t give up either. Too many weapons there. And…

The gun clicks. He jerks his head up. “Wait!”

Lukas stops. The gun is an inch from the man’s head. “Yes?”

Clint swallows. Feels the tears drip down his face. The words are stuck in his throat, they won’t come out. He stutters helplessly, his chest heaving hard.

“Just say it,” Mikhail whispers next to him. A comforting hand is on his shoulder, rubbing small circles. “It’s alright, Agent Barton. You can tell us.”

The other agent shakes his head frantically. Clint looks at him, then up at Lukas. He _has_ to.

“Omaha,” he whispers.

Lukas raises an eyebrow. “A little louder, Agent.”

“Omaha,” he repeats, avoiding the other agent’s gaze. “There’s a base in Omaha.”

Lukas smiles. It’s broad and triumphant and Clint closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see it. “Omaha,” he repeats. “And that is where they will take her?”

“It’s a research facility,” he says. “Nuclear physics and weapons design. Good food. No fish.”

Mikhail murmurs something to Lukas, who nods. “Give us the coordinates,” he says to Clint.

“I don’t know them,” Clint says, pressing his hands into his eyes. “I don’t.”

“Hmm.” Lukas turns to the other agent. “Do you?”

A head shake.

“Shame.” The gun fires.

Clint doesn’t scream this time. It sits in his chest, waiting to be released, but all that comes out is a little choked noise. “I _told_ you,” he says, staring at the bodies in front of him. “I...I fucking _told_ you.”

“Yes, you did. Next time, don’t make me wait.” Lukas pats him on the head. “Where in Omaha is this base?”

“I don’t know the coordinates,” he says again. He looks up at Lukas. “I swear. I don’t. You gotta believe me.”

He cringes, waiting for retribution, but Mikhail just touches his shoulder again. “Could you identify it on a map?” he asks gently.

Clints nods furiously. “Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Yes.”

“Get him a map,” Lukas orders. He pulls a radio from his pocket and starts giving orders in rapid Russian. When he’s done, he kneels down next to Clint and puts a finger under his chin. “Look at me, Agent Barton.”

He forces his eyes up. “What?”

“Mikhail says he has been teaching you lessons. Is that so?”

“Yeah.” His gaze flickers over to Mikhail.

“Then consider this another one.” Lukas’s fingers tighten around his jaw, digging in without mercy. “Everyone has a breaking point. And now I know yours. If you try to withhold information from me ever again, I will fill a room with innocents, and I will slowly kill them one by one until you tell me what I want to know. It will last for hours, and every single death will be your fault.” He leans in closer. “Do you doubt me on this?”

“No,” Clint whispers, shaking his head as much as he can. He doesn’t. He can see the truth in Lukas’s eyes.

“Good.” He shoves Clint away onto the floor. “Get him a map, Mikhail. We have work to do.” He walks out the door, raising the radio to his mouth.

Mikhail stands. “I will be back, Clint.”

Clint flinches. “Don’t leave me with them. Please?”

He’s not afraid of dead bodies. But their eyes are still open and staring, and the pooling blood has reached his skin, and he can’t stand to be here with them any more. He has to get out.

“Just for a moment,” Mikhail says. “I promise.”

He walks out the door, and Clint is left with his ghosts.


	21. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint gets some recovery time.

Clint wakes up to a hand sliding over his neck. “Clint,” someone murmurs. “Wake up.”

“No,” he moans.

“Just a little longer. Then you may sleep.” He forces his eyes open, meeting Mikhail’s gaze. “Good,” the man praises. “Here is a map. Locate your base for us.”

He does. He points to it with a shaking finger, leaving a smudge of blood on the paper. Lukas returns and asks about defenses and surveillance and early warning systems. Clint answers with a hollow voice. He’s not even sure the words are coming out in the right order, but Lukas seems satisfied. Clint cringes away when the cold hand reaches for him, but it’s just to pat his head and murmurs something vaguely demeaning in Russian.

Then Mikhail is there, and Clint doesn’t even have the energy to be embarrassed as the man literally scoops him off the ground and carries him bridal-style out the door. He’s too grateful to be leaving the bodies behind. SHIELD. They came for him. Against all odds, they came for him, and this is what they got for it.

No one else will, now. Why would they? It’s too dangerous. He’s too useless. No further tactical advantage in retrieving him and risking a higher body count. He’s lucky anyone came at all.

“Shhh,” Mikhail murmurs, and Clint realizes he’s muttering all this out loud. “I am here. I will not leave you again.”

Some tiny, _tiny_ part of him is screaming in absolute rage. Because this is the man who whipped his back bloody, stuck him in isolation for five weeks, killed a child to prove a point, and left him to Lukas’s mercy for days. Mikhail does _not_ deserve his trust.

But Clint can’t help how he relaxes into the other man’s arms, how he undoubtedly feels just a little bit safer with Mikhail holding onto him.

“You can sleep,” Mikhail tells him. “I have you now.”

He shouldn’t. He should stay alert, because no matter what his brain thinks, he’s definitely still in danger. But as soon as the command processes through his sluggish mind, he doesn’t really have a choice in the matter. He doesn’t so much as sleep as he just…shuts off. Everything goes dark and he sinks into the depths, embracing unconsciousness.

He doesn’t dream. Thank God for for small miracles.

When Clint claws his way back to alertness, he’s greeted by a dark room, lit only with the dull glow of monitoring machines. He lays there and takes stock of his battered body, trying to catalogue his status without letting any potential watchers know he’s awake.

He’s laying on his stomach on a vaguely uncomfortable mattress. There are cuffs around his sore wrists, attached to either side of the bed. He’s got enough room to curl his arms towards himself, but not much. Nothing around his ankles. He’s naked, still, but there’s a blanket over his ass and legs. His back is open to the air.

Clint can feel the cane wounds and the burns on his feet, but the whole sensation is muted. Like the signals are muffled. Painkillers, probably. He can feel the IV in his arm. _That’s nice of them._

The memories slowly leak back to him, and he grinds his teeth against the misery threatening to erupt. _It’s okay. You’re okay. They’re dead, but you’re still alive, and that’s what matters._

He’d said the same thing after The Snap, too. He didn’t believe it then either.

_Focus, Clint,_ Natasha whispers in his ear, and he takes a deep breath and pulls himself together. He can do this. He broke a little, but that’s alright. He can fix it.

“You’re awake,” Mikhail says, and Clint jumps at the sound. “How are you feeling?”

A gentle hand lands on his arm and he twitches again before turning to look. “Like shit,” he says hoarsely. “Where am I?”

“Lights,” Mikhail warns, and Clint screws his eyes shut against the flood of brightness. It takes a few minutes to adjust. “We are in the medical section,” Mikhail says, offering him a cup and a straw. Clint sips at it slowly, relishing the feeling of cold water in his mouth. “Your new room for the moment.”

Clint tugs a little at the restraint on his left wrist, then says, “How long was I out?”

“Twenty hours.” Mikhail reaches over and undoes the cuff, then the other one. “We’ve been giving you fluids and antibiotics. A blood transfusion as well.”

“We?” He tries to picture Lukas in a pair of scrubs, sticking an IV in his arm.

“Yes.”

Clint shifts his weight as much as he can and props himself up a little higher on his elbows. The motion makes him hiss in pain, but he doesn’t want to talk to Mikhail with his face shoved into the mattress. “How bad is it?”

“You will be fine,” Mikhail says. “You’re already starting to heal.”

Heal. That’s a joke. His body might heal. His mind’s going to take a lot longer to put back together. “My feet,” he says, twisting a little to look behind him, but the movement tugs on the skin at his back and he winces.

“You will not be walking for some time.” Mikhail punctuates this statement by offering him the water again. Clint ignores him in favor of slowly shifting onto his side, then even more slowly into a sitting position. Despite his careful motions, he feels a few of the barely-healed welts split open.

Once up, he takes the offered water and scrubs a hand over his face, which is oddly smooth. He distinctly remembered having patchy stubble, which means someone shaved him while he was unconscious. The thought is frightening, that someone was able to get that personal with him and he wasn’t awake for it.

Now that he’s facing the rest of the room, he can take stock of what’s in it. It looks like any other SHIELD hospital room he’s been in, although there’s something decidedly 1960s about the green tile floor. The walls are that same blank smoothness as the rest of the base. There’s a door with a small window set in it. Across from him is another door, cracked enough that Clint can get a glimpse of the sink inside. A bathroom, probably.

“You will have to forgive the lack of ceiling vents,” Mikhail says dryly, and Clint snorts a little at that. “We underestimated your skills. It will not happen again.”

“Mmm.” Clint runs his tongue over his teeth. The water helps, but his mouth tastes like ass. He could really use a toothbrush. And a shower. “So what happens now?”

“Now you heal,” Mikhail says. “And then we resume your training.”

He tries to keep his face expressionless, but something probably slips through. “Oh.”

“Do not worry. If you are good, it does not have to be difficult.”

“Good,” Clint scoffs, but Mikhail raises an eyebrow and he cuts off the rest of his sentence. No sense getting himself in trouble right now. He needs to play nice, take the time to fix the cracks in his armor. He changes track. “Where’s your friend?”

“Lukas? He is overseeing the extraction of our asset. He will not be back for some time.”

A tension releases from him that he didn’t even realize was there. “Oh.”

“I am sorry,” Mikhail says, “about what happened.”

Clint gives him a bitter smile. “Which part, exactly? The torture, or the hallucinations?”

“The rape,” he says in a matter-of-fact tone, and something twists in Clint’s gut. “That was unacceptable. The men involved have been punished accordingly.”

Clint closes his eyes against the phantom fingers suddenly brushing over him. “Give me a gun,” he says, “and I’ll punish them. I’ll make it last.” The anger is boiling through him, hot and steady and it builds, higher and higher—

“Take a deep breath, Clint.” Mikhail’s voice brings him crashing back down, and he obeys the other man without thinking. He’s fine. He made it out, he’s not damaged from it. He survived. Time to pull out his inner Natasha and compartmentalize. He’s still on a mission, and until he’s safe back home, he does not have the luxury of falling apart over something like that. _Get it together, Hawkeye._

“I’m fine,” he says tightly, when he’s got a grip on himself.

Mikhail makes a disbelieving noise, but doesn’t comment further. Instead, he stands up and pushes his chair away. “Would you like a bath?”

“I—what?” Clint stares at him, a little nonplussed by the change in direction. “A _bath_?”

“Yes.”

“Like a bath bath? Or a sponge bath?”

Mikhail nods at the bathroom. “There’s a tub in there.”

A bath sounds fucking glorious. Clint practically salivates at the idea of being clean again, of washing the literal blood from his hands. “God, _yes_ ,” he says, then he remembers. “But I can’t stand. And probably shouldn’t get those wet.”

Mikhail picks up a sealed packet from the little table next to the bed. “I have a solution.”

The solution is something kind of like plastic wrap. Clint isn’t sure exactly what it is, but when he asks, Mikhail starts giving him some science-y explanation about polymers and sealant, and eventually Clint just tells him to put the damn things on. “Sir,” he adds, at the look the statement gets him.

“Respect,” Mikhail reminds him, but he wraps Clint’s feet anyway, then pulls the IV from his arm. “Comfortable?”

“I guess,” Clint says. Then he lets out an undignified yelp as Mikhail leans down and picks him up from the bed, blanket and all. “Whoa, what the fuck!”

“You are not going to walk anywhere,” Mikhail says, carrying him into the bathroom. He did this in the cell, Clint remembers, but he’d been too out of it at the time to really give a damn.

Now humiliation flushes his face and he squirms uncomfortably. “Put me _down_ ,” he says, and Mikhail obliges, setting him gently into the grimy-looking tub before pulling the blanket away. He turns on the water and lets it run for a moment, then lets the tub fill. From a little cabinet next to the sink, he pulls out a washcloth and a bottle of soap.

Clint holds out his hand for them, but Mikhail just sits on the edge of the tub, wets the cloth, and pours soap on it. When he reaches forward, Clint pulls away. “I can wash my own damn self.”

“I know you can,” Mikhail says. “But I take care of things that are mine.”

“I’m not _yours_ ,” Clint says.

“You are mine,” Mikhail tells him, reaching for his arm again. “You were given to me.”

His tone leaves no room for argument, but Clint goes for it anyway. “That’s bullshit.” He dodges Mikhail’s grasp, making the water in the tub slosh onto the floor. “You can’t give a person away, what kind of slavery crap is—”

Mikhail grabs him, twisting his wrist in a bruising grasp that makes Clint hiss in pain. “You _have_ to belong to me, Agent Barton,” he says, and Clint can’t help the jolt of fear at the sound of hearing his own fucking name. “Because your alternative is belonging to Lukas. Do you really want to be at his mercy again?”

He’s shaking his head before he even knows it. Can still feel the hallucinations and terror and pain in the back of his mind. “No. Fuck, no.”

“Then relax,” Mikhail says. “And let me take care of you.”

Good cop/bad cop. The oldest game in the book. Lukas steps in with the torture, Mikhail picks up the broken pieces and comforts him. But it’s a classic for a reason, and even knowing what they’re doing doesn’t necessarily stop it from being effective. Like the conditioning. Clint is just a rat in their maze, and they can make him move wherever they want. And he can’t even stand on his own two feet to fight them right now.

_Fucking_ _useless_ , someone whispers, and he swats the voice away.

“Fine,” he eventually says, relaxing his arm. “But _I_ wash the dangly bits.”

Mikhail laughs. “Alright.”

He’s gentle about it, at least, easing the cloth over the gashes and cleaning off the dried blood. Clint can’t deny that it feels fucking amazing, and he definitely has to bite his lip to keep quiet when Mikhail starts in on his hair. Weeks of grime and blood and mud come out, to the point where they have to drain and refill the tub several times.

“This is an unusual hair style,” Mikhail says, dragging his fingernails along Clint’s scalp, working out the last of the gunk. The hair on the sides is growing in further, meaning that he probably looks a little ridiculous with his hair all different lengths. He’ll have to shave the sides down again, or shave the top to match. “When did you do this?”

“Midlife crisis,” Clint mumbles, letting his head tilt with the pressure. “Needed a change.” _Needed to be a whole new person for awhile._

“It’s very distinctive for a spy.”

“Wasn’t working for SHIELD at the time.”

Mikhail starts on his back. “Why not?”

Clint shrugs. “Taking a break.” _A phrase which here means, SHIELD was fucked up and so was I._

“Hmm.” The noise tells him that Mikhail isn’t happy with the answer, but they’re tiptoeing the edges of Clint’s comfort zone in terms of information giving. Now that he’s not strung out on drugs and he’s somewhat less sleep deprived, he can remember exactly what he has to keep secret, and why.

He changes the subject. “When you say training…what exactly does that mean?”

“What do you think it means?” Mikhail presses the cloth into his hands. Touching himself, even just to get clean, makes him feel a little sick. He does the job quickly and hands it back to Mikhail, who gently runs it down his leg.

“Nothing good,” Clint says. “Based on prior experience with you.”

“It does not have to be painful. All you have to do is what I ask.”

“And what happens when you ask for something I won’t do?” He turns, meets Mikhail’s cold gaze. “What happens then?”

“Then we will see whose will is stronger,” he says, finish the other leg, and Clint swallows. “Are you ready to be done?”

“Yeah,” Clint says. He’s still tired, and the painkillers are wearing off. He’s not sure if he’s allowed to ask for more. “Yes.”

Mikhail pulls the drain and lets the water slide away, then takes a rough towel and pats Clint dry. There’s blood on the towel when he pulls it away, but not as much as there could be, and Clint has to take a second to squash the gratefulness inside him. Just because Mikhail isn’t abusing him right now doesn’t mean he won’t later.

He lets Mikhail pick him up from the tub, biting his lip against the flush of shame. He’s put back on the bed, and Mikhail covers him up with the blanket. “You need to rest more,” he says. “You had a rough week.”

Clint lets out a humorless laugh. “And whose fault was that?”

“Yours,” Mikhail says, putting in a new IV. “As much as I wish it weren’t so.” He doesn’t give Clint a chance to answer. “Make yourself comfortable, please.”

He rearranges himself back onto his front, trying not to jostle his feet too badly. Mikhail puts the cuffs back on him, then quickly peels off the wet outer bandages on his feet. “Sleep,” he tells Clint. “I will return in a few hours.”

The words start a slow thread of panic in him. Bad things happen when Mikhail leaves him. “Wait, where are you going?”

“I have paperwork to attend to,” he says, stepping to close the bathroom door. “You are not the only responsibility I have.” He moves around the bed and kneels beside Clint, apparently seeing something in his expression. “ _Ptichka_ ,” he says softly. “What is the matter?”

_Fuck off, I’m fine,_ is what he wants to say, but when he opens his mouth what comes out is, “Please don’t go.”

He fucking hates himself for saying it, but the panic is growing. When Mikhail leaves, Lukas comes in. Clint can’t handle that. Not now. It’ll shatter him.

There’s a flare of something in Mikhail’s eyes, but he quickly controls it. “The door will be locked,” he says, showing Clint the key. “And I have the only key. You are safe in here. No one will come in.” His voice lowers. “You are _safe_ , Clint. This is a promise I make to you.”

No. He’s really not. But if Clint has learned anything in the past weeks, it’s that safety is relative. “Okay,” he whispers, trying to keep himself calm.

“Good,” Mikhail murmurs. “I need you to trust me, Clint.”

“I do,” he says, and he does. Just a little.

Mikhail puts an easy hand on his head, stroking his hair. The motion is soothing, peaceful, and Clint eventually slides into half-awake/half-not trance. He’s alert enough to hear a knock at the door, and Mikhail murmurs something in Russian to him before getting up to answer.

“ _Soldat_ ,” he says. “Is it time?”

“ _Da_ ,” comes the husky reply. Clint has enough energy to wonder _time for what_ and _why does that voice sound familiar_ before he gives in and falls asleep entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took way too long to come out. I would make excuses about work, which is somewhat true, but honestly I just didn't know where I wanted this chapter to go. So my apologies for the wait! It's a little longer, so I hope that makes up for it!


	22. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’s not necessarily an optimistic person by nature, but he’s always been a firm believer in the “there’s always a way out” mantra. He’s gotten himself out of nasty scrapes before, been beaten and bruised and fucked up and still managed to get himself back home alive.
> 
> But this is different. It’s been different since Lukas managed to take him down on the pier, and it’s only gotten steadily worse. And Clint wonders now, as he waits for Mikhail to come back, if this might be the one time where there really isn’t a way out.

They won’t give him any of their fancy super serum—some bullshit about lessons being properly learned—so it takes another round of IV antibiotics, one more humiliating bath, and a fair amount of sleep later before Mikhail declares him healed enough to leave the medical section. He comes into the room with pants, a shirt, and a wheelchair, complete with an alarming amount of restraints. “I am moving you,” he tells Clint, releasing the cuffs on his wrists. “Into the chair, please.”

Clint looks at the chair, then looks at him. “Is the bondage really necessary? I can’t walk, remember?”

“You climbed up a ceiling vent,” Mikhail reminds him. “And drove a motorcycle off a cliff. I suspect burned feet will not be a hindrance if you think you can escape.”

He’s right, of course, and Clint decides losing the inevitable scuffle isn’t worth the potential consequences. So he swallows his protests and dresses, lets Mikhail help him into the chair, then strap him down far more than he feels is really necessary.

Mikhail pauses at Clint’s wrists, which are lacerated and bruised. “I will leave these free,” he says, “but you are not to move them from the armrests. If you do, I will not hesitate to paralyze you. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” Clint says. When Mikhail doesn’t move, he sighs and corrects himself. “Yes, sir.”

“Good,” Mikhail says. Then he produces a blindfold and wraps it around Clint’s eyes. “Shhh,” he says as Clint tenses. “I am still here. You can still hear me.”

“I know.” He focuses on trying to breathe, hating how easily the other man can see his panic. Blindfolds have always freaked him out a little, but since spending five weeks in a dark room…well, it’s worse now. _Calm the fuck down,_ he orders himself, channeling his inner Coulson. _Stop giving him ammunition._

“We are moving now,” Mikhail tells him, and the chair glides forward.

Clint forces his white-knuckle grip to relax, and he tries to distract himself by counting the seconds instead. He tries to memorize the turns they take, but it’s a pointless endeavor. Not like he really wants to go back to that room, even if there is a shower there.

After three-hundred seconds, Mikhail speaks. “You are very quiet today.”

Clint shrugs. “What do you want me to say?”

“Nothing in particular.” There’s a pause, and then, “Do you want to know where we are going?”

“Are you going to give me a straight answer?”

“Yes.”

Well, that’s a shocker. “Where are we going, sir?”

“Germany,” Mikhail says, and the chair rolls to a stop. “Wait here, please.”

Like he can do anything else. There’s a whisper of air on his back, and then Mikhail is walking away. Clint rolls the information around his mind, trying not to lose his shit. Germany? Motherfucking fuck, he can’t go to _Germany_. Russia sucks, but it’s his one tenuous connection to SHIELD. If they move, he’ll have to start all over again. It’s not like HYDRA will leave a forwarding address for him.

He’s not necessarily an optimistic person by nature, but he’s always been a firm believer in the “there’s always a way out” mantra. He’s gotten himself out of nasty scrapes before, been beaten and bruised and fucked up and still managed to get himself back home alive.

But this is different. It’s been different since Lukas managed to take him down on the pier, and it’s only gotten steadily worse. And Clint wonders now, as he waits for Mikhail to come back, if this might be the one time where there really isn’t a way out.

 _You can’t think like that,_ Tony says. _There’s always a way out. Every time._

“I don’t think there is this time,” he whispers back to him, and his heart twists a little. _Laura. The kids. They’re never gonna know…_

“Who are you talking to?” asks a voice, and Clint jumps about six feet, his head turning as he tries to pinpoint the speaker. “Or are you just going crazy?”

Natov. He would recognize that fucking voice anywhere. “Fuck off,” he says, and Natov laughs.

“We’ve got a long flight together,” he says, leaning closer to Clint’s left ear. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Mikhail’s gonna kill you if you touch me again,” he says, feeling like a little kid hiding behind his big brother. “Back the fuck up.”

“Mikhail isn’t around all the time,” Natov says. There’s a sadistic glee to his voice, and Clint can only imagine the expression behind it. Fingers trail along behind his ear and down his neck. Clint jumps again, earning another chuckle. “Twitchy, aren’t you? You could take off the blindfold, you know. He’s not looking right now.”

Clint twists as much as he can in the restraints and throws a punch. It’s right handed, and he can’t get the force behind it that he wants, but it lands perfectly on target. Natov makes a choking noise and Clint hears stumbling footsteps backwards. “I told you to back up,” he says, shaking out his fist and putting it back on the armrest. “Next time, do it.”

“Agent Barton,” Mikhail says, coming back over. “Lieutentant Natov. What is happening here?”

“Nothing, sir,” Natov wheezes. “I was just making sure the prisoner followed his instructions.”

Mikhail switches to Russian. He doesn’t raise his voice, but Clint would recognize the _superior-telling-off-a-subordinate_ tone anywhere. He stifles a snicker as Natov apologizes and slinks away.

Then it’s his turn, apparently. “You had one instruction,” Mikhail reminds him, and Clint stiffens, his amusement slowly vanishing. “What was it?”

“I…” he starts, then shakes his head. What’s the point? “Not to move my hands, sir.”

“And what did you do?”

Clint smirks. “I punched him in the dick.”

“You disobeyed,” Mikhail corrects. “Say it.”

“I disobeyed.” _Respect. Honesty. Obedience. Actions have consequences._ Fuck.

“Very good, Agent Barton. Do you know what will happen next?”

“You’re going to paralyze me.” He clenches his fingers reflexively. “Sir, he—”

“I understand what he did to you, Agent. It is not your place to enact retribution.” Mikhail’s fingers press under his chin and Clint lets his head tilt up. “If he bothers you again, you are to let me know immediately. _Da_?”

“ _Da,_ ” Clint mutters, pulling his chin back. Mikhail lets him go. Then there’s a touch to the back of his neck, and he feels the stickiness of a patch.

He’s wheeled up a ramp after that, and forcibly transferred into a different seat. _We’ve got a long flight together,_ Natov had said. He’s probably aboard an airplane, then.

Mikhail unties the blindfold and Clint blinks the blurriness out of his eyes. “Thank you,” he says, hoping to earn himself some points back.

“You’re welcome.” Mikhail steps away and Clint looks around as much as he can. Yep, he’s on a plane. It’s surprisingly Quinjet-like, as much as a 1960s HYDRA plane can mimic a 2020s SHIELD Quinjet. All he can really see is the dashboard, but it looks advanced beyond what he knows most planes this era have. Clint studies the flips and switches, since the view out the cockpit window is shuttered closed.

His tentative plan is the same as before. This little snag aside, his only hope of rescue is to either signal his own SHIELD again, or get away and get to this timeline’s SHIELD. In case of the latter, he’s going to take whatever information he can to them about HYDRA’s capabilities.

Mikhail comes back and straps him into the seat, then takes the one next to him. He calls something over his shoulder and Clint hears the footsteps of others and the clank of restraints and belts. “We leaving?” he asks, and Mikhail nods. “How long will it take?”

“At least seven hours,” Mikhail says. “Perhaps longer. We will need to make a stop along the way.”

Clint doesn’t ask about the stop, even though everything in him is absolutely dying to. “This will wear off before then, right?”

“The paralytic will wear off shortly, yes. Then we will see how well you behave yourself.”

“Not gonna do anything,” Clint says, and Mikhail just gives him A Look. As if to prove his point, Natov walks by—still limping a little, to Clint’s amusement—and takes the pilot seat. He raises the window covers to reveal a blank wall in front of them.

“Ready,” he says in Russian, and Mikhail answers in the affirmative.

“We’re going to fly into the wall,” Clint points out, but Mikhail just smiles at him. Natov slips on a headset and goes through what Clint recognizes as pre-flight checks. When he’s done, he grabs the joystick, and the plane lifts up.

Straight up, which means the jet has turbines somewhere. Very quiet ones, because he can’t hear a damn thing. “Nice ride,” he says to Mikhail.

“It was a SHIELD design originally,” he says. “We merely improved it.”

Meaning Stark design, most likely. He doubts there were any improvements to really be made. Clint looks back out the window and watches the plane rise. Out the window, he sees the blue edges of a lake. “Underwater tarmac?”

“Security, leftover from the war,” Mikhail says. He looks relaxed, almost sprawled in his chair. “No one is going to destroy airplanes they cannot see.”

“Makes sense, I guess.”

It takes around an hour for the paralytic to wear off enough for basic movement. Clint adjusts his position in the chair with uncoordinated limbs, then turns to examine the rest of the plane. There’s a wider section behind them, the aisle lined with five seats on either side. Each seat is facing a screen. Three are occupied. Beyond that is a more open section, where Clint can see various stacks of equipment and weapons. Guns, he’s pretty sure, but it’s hard to tell from this vantage point.

“Tell me something,” Mikhail says, looking up from a stack of papers, and Clint pulls his attention back. “Did you know the agents who came for you?”

Honestly, he barely remembers their faces, lost as he was in a maze of pain and terror and sleep deprivation. He might have known them in passing. But in truth, since Natasha, he’s avoided getting close to anyone at work. It’s better that way. “Personally? No.”

Mikhail nods. “I just thought you would like to know I had them buried appropriately,” he says. 

“Thank you,” Clint says, and Mikhail nods again before returning to whatever he’s reading. Clint isn’t sure why he would do that, but he’s glad of it. Better a burial then just being tossed aside somewhere. He stares out the window for a few minutes, trying to keep his mind off the hazy memories of watching his coworkers die.

“Can I ask you something, sir?”

“Certainly.” Mikhail sets his report aside.

“When you were bringing me back from the town, you told me to give Lukas whatever he wanted.”

“Yes, I did.” His face is contemplative. “I wish you had.”

“You said you knew that from your own experience.”

“What is your question, Clint?”

“Did he hurt you like that, too?”

Mikhail is silent so long that Clint gives up, pretty sure he’s not going to get an answer. He’s toying with the straps of his harness when Mikhail says softly, “Not in the same way, no.”

Intrigued, Clint starts to ask another question, but Mikhail cuts him off. “It is not an experience I am willing to discuss with you right now.”

“Right now,” Clint says. “So, some other time?”

That gets him a half-smile and a head shake, which doesn’t _necessarily_ mean no. Still, Clint doesn’t push it. Mikhail seems to have forgiven him for punching Natov, but he’s probably still on thin ice. No sense in pissing the man off more just to get some answers.

He sleeps a little bit, but after another long stretch of time, he’s distracted by the growing pressure in his body. He ignores it for as long as he can, but eventually he has to acknowledge it. “Sir.”

“Yes?”

Clint hates this. He hasn’t had to ask permission to go piss since grade school. But he can’t walk, and he suspects that there’ll be some raised eyebrows if he starts to crawl around the floor of the plane. “There a bathroom in this joint?”

“There is,” Mikhail says calmly, setting his files on the floor. “Do you need it?”

“Yes.” Clint shifts in his seat a little. “Please.”

Mikhail helps him into the chair, then into the bathroom. He leaves Clint alone to actually do his business, but then conducts a way-too-thorough pat-down as soon as they’re out of the bathroom.

“What am I gonna do, kill you with the shitty hand soap? There’s nothing even in there to make a weapon out of.” Which isn’t entirely true, but Mikhail just snorts quietly and takes Clint back to his seat.

Natov turns around as soon as they come back. “Signal received,” he says to Mikhail.

“Sooner than expected.”

“Do you want me to wait?”

“No. Prepare to land.” Mikhail turns to Clint. “Back into your seat, please.” He obeys, reaching for the straps before Mikhail can put them on.

“I’m a big boy,” he says. “I can buckle myself.”

“I’m aware,” Mikhail says, doing it anyway. “Take us down, Lieutenant.”

They’re landing in some woods, as far as Clint can tell. He can see trees and a faint hint of snow. Maybe they’re on a mountain? He strains, but his position offers him a limited view.

The back of the plane opens, letting in a blast of cold air. Mikhail puts a hand on his shoulder. “Stay,” he says.

“Can’t walk,” Clint reminds him, but then he’s distracted by the sound of a heavy pair of boots walking up the gangway.

“ _Soldat_ ,” Mikhail says. “How was your trip?”

“Mission success,” comes the raspy reply, and Clint turns, because he _knows_ that voice. He knows it very well.

He sees the muddy clothes first, then the bone-tired exhaustion underneath the carefully held body language. Then he sees the arm, new and silver and shiny, so different from the vibranium one he knows. Finally he looks up, and there, looking right back at him with a cold, blank expression, is Bucky Barnes.

No. Not Bucky.

The Winter Soldier. 


	23. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s the helplessness of it that’s killing him. Because as strong as Clint’s will is, Mikhail is holding all the cards here. And Clint has been on the other side of the desk before. He’s watched the most stalwart prisoners be broken down over time by sheer persistence. Hell, he’s broken people himself. _I would never_ is easy to say when you're safe at home and there's no danger to contend with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Idk if you guys get notifications when I edit chapters, but I realized the other night that I never gave Clint any clothes, so I went back and fixed that in the previous one. Just a throwaway line.

Clint just barely manages to stop himself from saying Bucky’s name, which would bring up a whole host of problems he’s not ready to deal with. And it’s _not_ Bucky, he reminds himself. Not his Bucky. Even if he will be at some point in the future, right now he’s still the Winter Soldier. Still very much a HYDRA-slash-Red Room property.

So it’s not his friend. It’s not. But it _looks_ like him, and Clint has to turn back around before his expression gives him away. Mikhail and the Soldier have a brief conversation, then the Soldier goes to the front of the plane. He spares a single glance for Clint, probably cataloguing his various injuries, then takes the pilot’s seat from Natov. The plane rises back into the air.

“Friend of yours?” Clint asks later, when he’s got better control over himself.

“Merely an asset,” Mikhail says, sitting down and returning to his report. “Do not concern yourself.”

“Who said I was concerned?” Clint tears his eyes from Bucky—not Bucky, the _Soldier_ — and fiddles with his harness.

It occurs to him that he could probably take it off, seeing as the plane is steady in the air. But as soon as his hands go to the buckles, Mikhail makes a disapproving sound and Clint slowly lowers his hand back down to his lap. “Good,” Mikhail says. “Here. I brought something for you.”

He hands Clint a little workbook, like his kids used to bring home from school. Clint flips through the pages, his eyes flicking over the words. “You fucking serious?”

“Very much so.” He smiles at Clint. “Don’t worry. I will help you.”

Clint flips through it again. It’s a kids workbook, some kind of little reader with basic Russian words and their English translations. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“What’s the point?”

“Versatility. You need to be able to speak multiple languages. We will start with Russian.”

Clint scowls. “Multiple languages?”

“Yes.” Mikhail hands him a pen. “First ten pages, please.”

He examines the book. “I thought we determined I’m not a child? Because this is sending a mixed message, here.”

“First ten pages.”

Clint considers throwing the book at him, but decides it’s not worth the punishment. So he opens the book and starts teaching himself, wishing on occasion that he possessed Natasha’s head for languages. He’s never been sure if that was a Red Room thing or a Natasha thing, but she was always uncannily good at them. Clint, on the other hand, is _not_ the best. He pretty much mangles every word he tries, which is amusing only because Mikhail winces at every attempt.

After ten pages, he closes the book and taps his fingers on the cover. “Done already?” Mikhail asks, glancing over at him.

“Yeah.”

Mikhail quizzes him, correcting his pronunciation. When he’s satisfied, Clint gets a smile and a “Well done, Clint.” He tries to hand the book back, but Mikhail tells him to keep it. “The lessons will continue.”

“Great. Looking forward to it.” He fidgets in his seat. “Are we there yet, or what?”

“If you are bored, you are welcome to continue your studies.”

“Pass.” Clint drops the book on the floor and spins the pen around his fingers like a drumstick. He is bored, but he’s got his limits, and he’s not going to try and spend the next however many hours cramming Russian into his brain.

What he should be doing is coming up with an escape plan, but there’s not really a lot he can do on that front until they get to wherever they’re going. If he tries to run from the plane, he’s going to make it about seven feet before he gets taken down, and then Mikhail will punish him. Or Lukas will. Clint doesn’t want to spend another sixty hours awake.

He shudders at the thought of Lukas, and pushes it away. He hasn’t allowed himself to think about the agents, or Omaha, or anything else that happened to him in that cell. It’s too raw, and he needs to keep himself together. Compartmentalize. Fix the cracks. He can fall apart at home.

Assuming he ever gets that far.

Clint forces his attention back to the present. The Soldier is still flying the plane, but he’s occasionally glancing backwards at him with vague interest. Clint meets his gaze every time. He’s not stupid enough to think the Soldier is going to help him escape, but there might be _something_ there he can work with. He’ll take anything at this point.

The plane ride drags on. After awhile he does pick up the book again, but only to draw in the blank pages in the back. He’s no Steve Rogers, but he’s no slouch at sketching either. He traces out the SHIELD logo, then a terrible little sketch of Natasha, then the ship from Star Trek.

“You have a talent,” Mikhail says, looking over.

Clint shifts the book away. “I’m not that good.”

“You are. I look forward to seeing what other talents you have.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what I said.” Mikhail smiles a little. “You have a very suspicious nature, Clint.”

“Yeah, well, I’m a spy. Kinda comes with the job.” He draws the Avengers logo. “You keep talking about training me and _seeing my talents_ , and then you won’t tell me how or what for. That would make anyone suspicious.”

Mikhail sighs. “I thought we established that you need to trust me?”

“I do.” Jesus, he _still_ isn’t sure if he’s lying or not. He does, on some level, trust Mikhail. But also...he really fucking doesn’t.

Out of the corner of his eye, Clint sees the Soldier stiffen ever so slightly. It’s gone a second later, and he wonders if he imagined it. “Then do not concern yourself with the future,” Mikhail says, pulling his attention back. “All you have to do is listen and obey my instructions, and you will be fine.”

 _Yeah, and just how long is that going to work out?_ Clint thinks, shaking his head. They’d discussed it briefly before, but it’s been nagging at him since then. He’ll obey Mikhail for the smaller things—being polite, not touching the harness, following his orders—if only because he’s tired of getting smashed on the rocks for his little rebellions. But at some point, they’ll run into something he’s not willing to bend on.

 _Then we’ll see whose will is stronger,_ Mikhail had said, and Clint clenches his fists.

It’s the helplessness of it that’s killing him. Because as strong as Clint’s will is, Mikhail is holding all the cards here. And Clint has been on the other side of the desk before. He’s watched the most stalwart prisoners be broken down over time by sheer persistence. Hell, he’s broken people himself. _I would never_ is easy to say when you're safe at home and there's no danger to contend with. 

But _n_ _ever_ is a long time when you're all alone. Clint knows that better than anybody.

“Clint,” Mikhail says.

“Yeah.” He shakes his mind out of the dark spiral. “Sorry. Zoned out. Did you say something?”

“I said, we will be landing shortly.” He puts all his papers back in his briefcase, then leans over and takes the book from Clint. “Do you need the restroom again?”

Clint shakes his head. “No. I’m hungry, though.”

“You can eat when we arrive.” He puts the book in the case, then pulls out a little cloth bag. “But first, we must have a discussion.”

“Oh, joy. I _love_ our discussions.”

Mikhail rolls his eyes. “I would like to take you off this plane without any theatrics, Clint. However, you proved to me on the way here that you cannot keep your hands to yourself.”

“I promise I won’t punch anyone in the dick,” Clint says, loud enough for Natov to hear, who flinches.

“Agent Barton,” Mikhail says sternly, and Clint immediately stops talking. _This is turning into a problem,_ he thinks, because at some point he’s probably going to go home again, and the last thing he needs is to turn into a puddle of fear whenever someone calls his fucking name.

Mikhail pulls something out of the bag. A syringe. A syringe and a little bottle. Clint instantly understands, and his blood turns cold. “Whoa. Hey. Let’s talk about this.”

“This will render you unconscious for the remainder of our journey,” Mikhail says. “But it has unpleasant side effects, and I would prefer not to use it.”

“So don’t.”

“The other option is how we came aboard, although this time I will be restraining your hands as well.”

“You have the patch things too,” Clint says, and then mentally kicks himself for opening his fucking mouth.

Mikhail smiles a little. “Yes, I have those as well.”

“So are you asking me which way I want to be tied up? Because the honest answer is none of them.”

“I am asking you one last time if you can behave yourself, or if I need to take increased measures to ensure you will do so.”

Clint glances over at Natov. “I’ll behave,” he says. “As long as that asshole stays away from me.”

“He will not bother you. You have my word.”

His stomach drops a little, and he can tell the descent is starting. The Soldier flips some switches and calls something back to Mikhail, who answers with a quiet authority.

As soon as the plane is down and the engines off, Mikhail has Clint back into the wheelchair. He does take the time to wrap some gauze around Clint’s wrists, which at least helps cushion the raw skin a little bit from the cuffs. The blindfold still turns his stomach, but he has better control over himself this time around. Mikhail buckles the last of the restraints and pushes him down the ramp.

They must be outside, because as soon as they leave the protection of the plane, a chilly wind steals his breath. “Jesus,” Clint hisses, shivering almost immediately. “That’s fucking cold.”

“Apologies. We will be inside shortly.”

“I’m gonna get fucking frostbite.”

“You will not get frostbite. Stop complaining.”

He doesn’t, because he’s Clint Barton, and Bitching About Shit is his middle name. Mikhail just calmly rolls him forward, although from the clipped responses, he’s probably wishing he _had_ drugged Clint right about now.

They finally get inside and away from the wind, and Clint just keeps talking, telling some mindless story about an old mission he’d been on with Natasha, and how they’d ended up on the side of a mountain in Italy with a very large dinosaur fossil head, one working parachute, and a helicopter full of very angry Japanese sailors after them.

“—and she only had on this insanely tight dress and a pair of heels, right, so I had to tear up my parachute to give her something to cover up with—”

Under the guise of scratching his face, he manages to dislodge the blindfold a little bit. Not enough to see everything, but enough to check out a little strip of the the floor as it rolls past him. It’s not really helpful.

“—so she said ‘that’s not going to work, Clint,’ and I said, ‘Sure it will, they do this stuff in movies all the time, what can go wrong?’—”

He really should shut up and pay attention to where he’s going, but once again, there doesn’t really seem to be a point. If he’s going to figure out a way out of here, staring at a little bit of floor rolling past isn’t going to help. Memorizing and reversing the turns is only going to get him back to wherever the plane landed, which is unlikely to be helpful. He might as well sit back and talk, because at least talking is helping to keep the fear at bay.

“—so she stuffed a bunch of C4 and a detonator in the dinosaur head, and I made the slingshot, and then the next time the helicopter made a pass at us we launched it—”

“We are here,” Mikhail announces, and the chair rolls to a stop. The blindfold comes off and Clint blinks owlishly, taking in his new surroundings. He’s in yet another cell— _quelle surprise_ , anyone?—with a cot, a toilet, a sink, and an obnoxiously large video camera in the corner.

There’s a blanket and a change of clothes on the cot, so he’s at least coming up in the world. “Nice digs."

“Make yourself comfortable,” Mikhail says. “I will return shortly.” He pats Clint on the shoulder and steps away.

“Are you gonna untie me or what?” Clint says, twisting in the chair.

“No. He will.” Mikhail leaves the room.

“Who will?” He twists the other way. “Hey!”

“Me,” says the Winter Soldier, stepping up from the shadows beside the door.

Clint jumps at the sudden appearance, then smiles a little. It’s not Bucky, he knows it’s not, but it’s still a familiar face. A little piece of home. “You got stuck on babysitting duty, huh?”

“You talk too much,” the Soldier says quietly, unstrapping one wrist from the wheelchair.

“It’s a special talent.”

“You show your fear this way.”

“No shame in being scared,” Clint says. “Fear makes you smart.”

“Fear gets you punished,” the Soldier corrects, freeing the other wrist. “You will see.”

Clint bites his lip. “Yeah, I’m sure I will.”

Together, they release the rest of the straps. Then the Solider picks Clint up like he weighs nothing, and deposits him on the little cot. Clint reaches for the blanket, wrapping it around his shoulders. It’s fucking _cold_ in this room.

The Soldier takes the chair and starts to wheel it out of the room, then pauses at the threshold. “Did it work?”

Clint turns. “Huh? Did what work?”

“Your story. The fossil.”

“Oh. Yeah, actually. Not well, but enough for us to take out the chopper. Then we had to wait for SHIELD to extract us.” He grins, remembering the ire of the museum they’d returned the remainder of the fossil to. “Dinosaur guy was pissed, though. We got a lecture on preserving the sanctity of our planet’s history. It was impressive.”

The Soldier nods. “This is a good memory for you?”

It is a good memory, dinosaur lecture aside. A successful mission, some heart-pounding adrenaline, plus he'd gotten to jump out of a helicopter with a questionable parachute. It was the first time he’d won a bet against Natasha too. “Yeah,” Clint says.

“Good.” The Solider pushes the chair over the threshold. “Hold onto those.”

“My memories?”

Another nod. “They will help.”

“Help with what?”

A pained look crosses his face. “Surviving,” he says, and the door closes before Clint can ask him what the hell that’s supposed to mean.

“Good talk,” Clint says to the empty room. He pulls the blanket tighter over his shoulders, lays down on his cot, and tries not to worry about it all too much.

He does anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry these updates are taking so long. I have some major writer's block with this story. I've never been good at the in-between filler chapters, and I think that's probably part of it. Hopefully my brain will pick up a little now that Clint is at his destination. 
> 
> Feel free to leave suggestions for things you want to see happen, also. I could use a little inspiration. And even if it doesn't make it into this story, oneshots are never off the table!


	24. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> None of it means anything. He needs to stay on Mikhail’s good side, build up his good will, then figure out a way to get the fuck out of here. He can stand a little humiliation in the long run.

Clint is on his thirteenth round of hackey sack the next time the door opens. Modified, because he still can’t really stand, so he’s sitting on the bed, mostly using his hands and his arms. He pauses in the middle of bouncing the wadded up ball of socks on his elbow. “Hey.”

“Clint,” Mikhail greets him, holding a plate in one hand and a water bottle in the other. There’s a book tucked under his arm. “What is this?”

“Kid’s game.” He drops the socks on the bed. “What do you got?”

“Food.” Mikhail closes the door with his free hand. “Off the bed, please.”

“What?”

“Get off the bed.”

Clint sighs. “Can’t stand,” he says for what feels like the millionth time. “What am I supposed to do, sit on the floor?”

Mikhail doesn’t say anything, but the answering raise of his eyebrow tells Clint all he needs to know. His face flushes red. “Fuck that.”

“Clint.”

“I’m not sitting on the floor.”

“Why not?”

He sputters for a moment. “Wh—because I’m not going to! Why don’t _you_ sit on the floor?”

Mikhail stands there for a moment longer, then nods. “Alright. It is your choice.”

_Well, that’s fucking ominous._

Quick as a flash, Mikhail tosses the book at him. It’s the little reader from the plane. “Next five pages. I will return later.”

He leaves, then, and Clint hesitates before reaching for the book. He thumbs through the next five pages, a creeping feeling of unease in the back of his mind the whole time. When the door opens again later, he looks up to see Mikhail, still holding the plate and the water. “Off the bed, please.”

“No.” He tenses, waiting to be beaten into submission, but Mikhail merely nods again and leaves. The cycle repeats itself three times before Clint figures out the game. Stay on the bed, no food. Sit on the floor, food. Simple. Effective. Mikhail doesn’t have to hit him. He just has to wait.

Anger boils inside him, sudden and overwhelming, and Clint hurls the book at the door with all the force he can muster. It hits with a less-than-satisfying _clang_ and falls limply to the floor. The spine faces upward, the pages underneath curled and bent. “Fuck you,” he says to it, leaning back against the wall as the rage drains from him just as quickly as it came, leaving a sick emptiness in its place. He draws his knees up into his chest, wincing as his feet make contact with the bed. “You hear me? Fuck you.”

He buries his face in his knees and tries to get control of himself. _They’re watching you,_ his brain reminds him. _They’re seeing all of this. Seeing you fall apart like the useless idiot you are._

“Stop it,” he hisses at himself, banging his forehead into his knees.

Goddamnit. He misses Laura. He’s been trying so hard to push her out of his mind, partly to keep himself focused, and partly to keep her and the kids safe. If they don’t know about his family, then there’s no potential leverage for HYDRA to track down, no lies for them to unravel. Clint knows he’s walking a tightrope every second he’s here, and that any wrong word out of his mouth could cast suspicion on who he is. If HYDRA ever gets wind of the time travel thing, he’s absolutely fucked, and so is his family. The whole world, really. So it’s better if he keeps the story the way he told Mikhail, pretending Natasha was his wife instead. No loose ends that way.

But he misses Laura anyway, no matter how much he tries not to. He can’t help it. She was always better at banishing his demons than he was.

The door creaks open again and Clint immediately unfolds himself. Mikhail steps through the door, holding the plate and the bottle of water. He stoops and picks up the book from the floor, a smile playing over his face. “Did it offend you somehow?”

Clint takes a deep breath, then slowly moves. Mikhail watches without expression as Clint slips down to the floor, sitting next to the bed.

“Very good,” Mikhail says. “I knew you would get there eventually.” He eyes Clint’s posture. “Hands to your side. Shoulders straight. Chin down.” Clint shifts to accommodate, already feeling his ankles starting to protest at the position. “Excellent.”

He takes Clint’s vacated spot on the bed and balances the plate on his knees. There’s cheese, and crackers, and little cuts of meat on it. It looks like a goddamn charcuterie board, way too domestic for this little cell. “Tell me what words you have learned.”

“Ptichka means bird,” Clint says, and Mikhail smiles.

“Very good.” He picks a cracker off the plate and holds it out. Clint reaches for it, but Mikhail pulls it back. “No.”

“Well, how am I suppo—” He cuts off, feeling the hot flush of humiliation sweep up his face. “Man, _fuck_ you.”

Mikhail slaps him for that, a heavy hit that snaps his head to the side and splits his lip. “You will respect me,” he reminds Clint.

“Fuck you, _sir_ ,” Clint growls, fighting the urge to rub his cheek.

A slap the other way. He lets his head roll with this one, which lessens the blow somewhat.

Mikhail stands. “On your knees. Hands behind your head. Elbows out.” Clint bites his lip against the flood of dread and shifts onto his knees. Mikhail adjusts his position with terse commands until he’s satisfied. “Yes.” He pats Clint on the head like a dog. “We will try this again later,” he says. “Stay there. I will know if you move.”

“I—” Clint starts, but Mikhail is already leaving, plate in hand, the door slamming shut behind him. “ _Fuck_!”

_You gotta learn to pick your battles, boy._

“Shut up, Dad,” Clint snarls, adjusting his knees again. “Nobody _fucking_ asked you!”

“But he’s right,” someone says, and he looks up to see Natasha leaning on the bed, giving him a lazy smile. “You’re too damn stubborn.”

He looks her up and down. “Did…did he drug me again?”

She shrugs. “I just think you miss me.”

Well, he does. Can’t deny that one.

Nat turns onto her stomach, kicking her feet up in the air like a girl at a slumber party. “So what’s the big deal this time?”

Clint scowls. “You know.”

Another shrug. “Is it really that bad? It’s just food.”

“It’s just another piece of my soul,” Clint snaps, and Nat laughs.

“You’re being stupid,” she chides him. “It’s not your soul. It’s just you, being too stubborn and proud to do something simple that will keep you alive.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re not even really here.”

“I know.” She brushes a strand of hair from her face. “But I’m still right.”

Yeah. She is. They’re both right. Clint needs to pick his battles. Mikhail already hand-fed him in the cell, even if he was too out of it to understand at the time. Just because he’s coherent now doesn’t mean anything. None of it means anything. He needs to stay on Mikhail’s good side, build up his good will, then figure out a way to get the fuck out of here. He can stand a little humiliation in the long run.

Natasha smiles at him. “There you go.” She gets off the bed and kneels next to him, then presses a kiss on his cheek. “Miss you too, stupid.”

“Nat,” he breathes, and she disappears between one blink and the next.

Mikhail doesn’t return until Clint’s arms and legs are shaking with the strain of keeping himself upright in the position he was set in. “Very good,” he says, eyes dragging approvingly over Clint’s trembling form. “Are you ready to try again?”

Clint fights down the urge to spit at him. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” He sits down and pulls the plate over. “So what have you learned?”

“Ptichka means bird,” he says again.

“Yes.” Mikhail picks up a slice of meat and offers it to him. This time, Clint clenches his fist against the flush of shame that boils up in him, and leans forward to take it in his teeth.

They work their way through the rest of the plate like that, one humiliating bite per correct word. When the food is gone, Mikhail smiles at him and sets it aside. “Put your arms down, _ptichka_.”

He drops his arms immediately, then winces as the blood starts flowing back into his hands. “Thank you, sir.”

“Was that as hard as you imagined?”

It hadn’t been, honestly, which was terrible in its own way. But Clint just shakes his head and shifts his weight onto his right knee, trying to ease the ache starting in the left. “No, sir.”

Mikhail gently brushes Clint’s hair back. “Good. You may sit now.”

Clint shifts onto his ass, grateful to be off his knees. He fixes his gaze on the floor and tries not to look at the empty plate. First baths, now feeding. He half expects Mikhail to pull out a toothbrush and clean his teeth for him.

Instead, Mikhail continues petting his hair. Clint doesn’t relax into the touch, but he doesn’t stop it either. He lets Mikhail pull gently until Clint’s head is touching his thigh, then lets that wandering hand stroke through his sweaty hair and down over the nape of his neck. He’d never admit it out loud, but it feels damn good.

And it goes undisturbed, until there’s a knock at the door. Clint shifts to move away, some small part of him still too prideful to want to be caught like this. Mikhail just tightens his grip. “Come in.”

The door swings open, revealing the Soldier.

And Lukas.

Clint’s heart stutters a couple times and almost unconsciously he finds his hand curling around Mikhail’s ankle, trying to ground himself in the other man’s presence. “Mikhail,” Lukas greets, offering nod. “And Agent Barton. How are you feeling?”

“He is well,” Mikhail says. “How was your trip?”

“It was very fruitful,” Lukas says, stepping into the cell. “Although not in the way I had hoped.”

“Still can’t find your physicist, huh?” Clint asks, wincing as the grip on his hair tightens.

Lukas shakes his head. “No, but we found other, more…interesting things.” He sounds overly pleased with himself and smiles coldly at Clint. “Thank you again for the information, Agent Barton. You have done HYDRA a great service.”

Clint tries to keep his expression neutral. _Other, more interesting things?_ Well, that’s horrifying to think about. He swallows and hopes that it’s nothing too future-altering. He was trying to avert a disaster, not create a bigger one.

“Mikhail,” Lukas says, and he follows it up with some Russian that Clint doesn’t even bother trying to understand. They exchange words for a minute, then Mikhail nods.

“I must go,” he says to Clint, leaning down and prying the fingers from his ankles. “The Soldier will take you to the showers. You are to clean yourself. When you return, you will continue your studies.” He pulls something from his pocket and hands it to the Soldier. It looks like a toothpaste tube. “You will put this on his feet after.” He pauses, then hands him something else. “And put this on before you take him out.”

The Soldier takes the tube and the other object with a quiet, “Yes, sir.” He holds it loosely in one hand, and Clint sees the glint of light on a silk cloth.

“Really?” he asks Mikhail. “A blindfold? Again?” He takes a deep breath to calm the rabbiting rhythm of his heart. It’s just a blindfold. He can deal.

“Consider it a tool to help you behave,” Mikhail says. “You are far too clever for your own good. I do not need you getting any ideas.”

Lukas smirks. “If he does, I would not mind correcting him.”

The words send a chill up Clint’s spine, something that doesn’t go unnoticed by anyone else in the room. The smirk grows wider. Clint curses himself and tries to school his expression into something bland and neutral.

“Behave yourself,” Mikhail says to Clint. He stands up and gives him one last head pat, then leaves with Lukas.

The door slams shut behind them. Clint lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and collapses back against the bed. There’s a sick sense of dread in his stomach. _Other, more interesting things…_

“Sit up,” the Solider says, stepping over to him. He reaches out with the blindfold. “Do not resist me.”

Clint wants to, but he’s pretty sure that fight would only end one way. So he just holds still and tries not flinch as the blindfold is expertly tied around his head, cutting off all light. _Keep it together. You’re fine. You’ve taken worse._

“Can you stand yet?” the Soldier asks, keeping a hand on his shoulder.

“No.” Clint tilts his face up. “You should get the cha—” He cuts off with a yelp as the Soldier steps over and scoops him up easily, carrying him bridal-style out the door. Clint flails in an undignified motion before before settling, not wanting to be dropped. “Okay. Yeah. Sure. This works too.”

“Keep still,” is all the Soldier says.

It’s unnerving, being carried while blind. Gives him almost a seasick feeling. “Do you know what they found at the base?” Clint asks, trying to take his mind off it. He racks his brain, trying to think of anything and everything, but he comes up empty. The Omaha base wasn’t big or important, not like the other two. He can’t imagine what would have been stored there to make Lukas so pleased with himself.

“Yes,” the Soldier says, adjusting his grip.

“Will you tell me?”

“Do not concern yourself with it. You have other things to worry about.” The Soldier shifts again, freeing one arm, and Clint hears a door open. Then the blindfold is unceremoniously pulled off, revealing a large shower room. It looks like a high school locker room. Spigots are placed at even intervals, and only the chest-height tile walls separating them into sections give any illusion of privacy. 

The Soldier deposits Clint on a little bench inside one of the stalls. “Clothes off.”

Clint strips off his shirt, then shifts side to side to work his pants down. The Soldier collects them both, then kneels to look at Clint’s bandaged feet. “Does this hurt?”

“Like a bitch,” Clint says. He’s mostly been able to ignore it—he’s always had a good headspace for pain—but the Soldier’s gentle touch to the bandages makes him hiss in a breath. “Ow.”

“I will remove these,” he says. “They should be changed daily.”

“They have been. Mikhail’s been—” he cuts off with another hiss of pain. “…taking care of it.”

Once the bandages are off, the Soldier presses a bar of soap into Clint’s hand, turns on the shower, and steps out of the stall. It’s not exactly privacy, but it’s the closest thing he’s had in awhile, and Clint takes a moment to revel in the simple act of washing his own goddamn hair. His arms hurt when he raises them, a lingering reminder of his last punishment. _Fucking Mikhail._

The water isn’t warm enough to want to linger. Clint scrubs himself with efficiency, ignoring the whispers of memory as he cleans between his legs. He focuses on his task and rinses the soap out of his hair, which most definitely needs a trim. “Done,” he says, leaning over to turn off the spray.

The Soldier offers him a rough towel. Clint dries off, then pulls his clothes back on. The blindfold is replaced, and then he picks Clint up again and carries him back to his little cell.

“Put this on,” he says, handing Clint the little tube.

“What’s in it?”

“You ask too many questions.” The Soldier crosses his arms and leans against the wall. Clint sighs, but opens the cap and gently applies a thin layer across the burns. It hurts to touch them, but soon the pain slows to a dull throb. _Must be some kind of painkiller/antibiotic mixture._

He puts the cap back on and looks over at the Soldier. “My name is Clint,” he says. “Figured you should know that, since you’ve seen me naked.”

No response. Not even a twitch. The Soldier just looks at him.

“What’s your name?”

He’s not sure what he’s expecting. His Bucky, the real Bucky, isn’t exactly forthcoming about his time as a HYDRA weapon. Anytime Clint had asked, his face had gone distant and he’d muttered something in Russian before telling Clint, “You don’t want to know.”

Still, he feels like he should try to be friendly. Loyal soldier or not, this guy is the only one who’s been nice to him without an ulterior motive. “What should I call you?” he asks again, leaning forward.

“I do not have a name.”

“Well, I have to call you something,” Clint says, trying for a smile. “How about I give you one?” He locks eyes. “Something like…Bucky?”

The result is instantaneous. The Solider visibly jerks, a hand going to his head. He growls something in what sounds like German, then pushes himself off the wall and stalks over to Clint.

Somewhat alarmed, Clint leans back, but he can’t avoid the metal arm that shoves him down onto the bed with immense force. “You talk too much,” the Solider says, leaning over him, fury written in every line of his body.

There’s no trace of his friend in those icy brown eyes. “Okay,” Clint gasps, trying to pull in a lungful of air. “Okay. Never mind. No names. It’s fine.”

The Soldier stays there for a moment longer, then straightens up and resumes his place by the wall. “You should study,” he says, gesturing to the book on the bed. All traces of the anger are gone, replaced with a cool indifference. “Before he returns.”

Clint gives a jerky nod and picks up the book, massaging his chest. He’ll have a bruise there tomorrow.

He turns pages, not really reading the words, brain still reeling. He’s positive the Soldier recognized the name, even if it hurt him. Which means that there might still be something of Bucky left in there, buried beneath the mind wipes and HYDRA programming. If Clint can somehow recall that back to the surface, he might stand a chance at escaping. Between Hawkeye and the Winter Soldier, anyone who comes after them is going to be toast.

The trick of it will be to hold onto himself at the same time. To break the Winter Soldier facade before Mikhail breaks Clint first. It’s only a matter of time for both things. And right now, Clint isn’t sure who’s going to hit the finish line first. He hasn’t got the first idea on how to get through to Bucky, and Mikhail is already miles ahead in his plan.

_Details later,_ Clint thinks, turning a page. For now, a name and a half-remembered memory will have to be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still working through some writers block. Sorry for the long delay! I hate that it takes me so long to get these out. 
> 
> Also still taking suggestions, if there's anything you'd like to see.


	25. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This is not the time for smart remarks,” Mikhail says calmly. “I will ask you questions, and you will answer. If I feel you are lying to me, I will strike you. For the first lie, I will strike once. After that, I will double them. If you move from this position, I will strike you once more.” Mikhail walks around him in a slow circle. “Do you understand?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The usual apologies for how fucking long this took. Hope the extra words make up for it!

Two days later, Clint manages to stand on his own two feet long enough to walk to the toilet instead of crawl. It hurts like hell and he’s wobblier than a baby deer, but he does it. “I’m the greatest,” he says to Nat, who is watching him from a sprawled out position on the floor. “Look at me, taking steps like a grown-ass adult.”

“Congrats,” she says drily. “Might wanna keep it to yourself for a few more days. Get as much strength as you can. What’s coming is going to be rough.”

“That’s encouraging.” Clint limps over to the sink and picks up his toothbrush. It’s a cheap piece of crap, but it does the job just fine. He almost cried with joy when Mikhail brought it in for him the other day. Apparently, even evil organizations have basic hygiene standards, as he now also has a rough cloth and a small bar of soap. Clint can’t tell if he’s moving up in the world, or if taking him to the showers every day would be too much of a hassle. Either way, he’s grateful.

Nat rolls her eyes. He can’t actually see her, but he can _feel_ the gesture. “You don’t bring me here to be encouraging. You do it because I don’t sugarcoat it. Mikhail is only being nice to you until you heal up. Then the real shitshow starts.”

She’s right, of course. It’s like their very first days together, when he’d been dehydrated and coerced into giving up his name. Mikhail had nursed him back to health, then systematically tore him down. “No point breaking someone who’s already broken,” he mutters, setting the toothbrush down. Nat is right. He should hide this as long as possible. Earn himself some extra time.

His grand plan to do that lasts about three hours. Clint is practicing slow steps from one side of the room to the other when the door suddenly opens. He freezes mid-step.

The Soldier enters, taking in the scene with an impassive gaze. “You are walking.”

“Don’t tell Mikhail,” Clint says sharply.

The Soldier stares at him for a moment, then gestures to the camera in the corner. “I do not have to.”

Well, _fuck_. In all the excitement about walking, he’d forgotten about the camera. “That thing actually works?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck.” He hobbles back to the bed and sits. “I’m a fucking idiot.”

The Soldier shrugs. There’s a faint amusement on his face, like he agrees with Clint’s assessment, but he stays quiet about it.

Clint adjusts the gauze wrappings on his feet. “Does he want me for something?”

“No.”

“So why are you here?”

There’s an awkward silence. Then the Soldier sighs, looking more human than Clint has ever seen. “I have a question,” he says, sounding a little unsure. Like he doesn’t know if he’s allowed to have questions. He probably isn’t.

“Shoot.”

This gets him a quizzical look. “Shoot what?”

Clint waves a hand. “The question. What do you want?”

The Soldier bites his lip for half a second, then says, “What is a…Bucky?”

Clint’s eyes widen, and he has to take a second to control himself. “It’s you,” he says, when he has a grip on his voice. “You’re Bucky.”

A head shake. “No.”

“Yeah, you are.” He leans forward. “James Buchanan Barnes. You go by Bucky.”

He winces and rubs his forehead. “ _No_.”

Clint pushes it. “You’re from Brooklyn. Your best friend is Steve—”

The door opens again, and the Solider immediately drops his hand. This time Mikhail steps in. He takes in the room with a curious look before nodding to himself and closing the door. “I see you have been walking,” he says to Clint.

Clint thinks about denying it, but there’s not really a point if Mikhail saw him on the camera. _You goddamn idiot._ “Just a little.”

“This is good. You are healing quickly.” He turns to the Soldier. “Leave us.”

The Soldier nods and exits quickly, closing the door. Clint swallows a little and looks up at Mikhail. “He was just checking on me,” he says quickly. “Making sure I was alive.”

“He is not your friend,” Mikhail says. “And he will not help you.”

“I wasn’t asking him for help.” Clint tries not to betray his anxiety. The Soldier might not be his friend, but he’s the closest thing Clint has right now. He _needs_ that connection to home, however tenuous it might be. “And I know he’s not.”

Mikhail gives him a searching look, then nods sharply. “Alright.”

Clint relaxes a little, then tenses right up again when he sees what Mikhail is carrying under his arm. It looks like a long strip of leather, about as wide as his forearm. There’s a split down the middle, leaving two tongues that merge together about six inches above the handle. The leather is stiff and thick. It looks like a belt, but worse, and Clint has to take a deep breath to get himself under control. “What the hell is that?”

“Off the bed,” is all Mikhail says, and Clint scowls a little before sliding off the bed and moving to kneel in front of him. “Good. Remove your shirt, please.”

Clint pulls it over his head, grimacing as his various wounds are aggravated. “Where did this come from?” Mikhail asks, touching the leather strip to the faint bruise on Clint’s chest. It hadn’t been as bad as he’d been expecting, but it was definitely a bruise.

“I don’t know,” Clint says, carefully controlling his expression. “Must’ve bumped it on something? I’ve kind of stopped keeping track of those things.”

Mikhail studies him for a long moment, but accepts the excuse. Clint breathes a sigh of relief and tosses his shirt to the side, then looks at the leather strip. “So, are we about to get kinky? Because you’re a good-looking guy and all, but I’m just not that into you.”

Mikhail snorts with vague amusement. “If you follow my instructions, this will not have to touch you at all.”

Clint takes a deep breath and forces his shoulders to relax. “So what’s the game, sir?”

“There is no game,” Mikhail says. “We are merely…starting over.”

“Starting over?”

“Yes.” He taps the leather on his hand. “We were getting to know each other, before all of this ugly business started. I would like to return to that.”

Clint thinks back to the first cell, to the couple of days they had spent talking before his escape. “You mean when you flayed my back open and threatened to cut off my dick?” He forces a bitter laugh. “Yes. _Great_ times. Let’s definitely do that again. Can I pencil you in for next week?”

The leather thing strikes his upper back and Clint lets out a wounded yelp without really meaning to. It stings like an absolute _bitch,_ and the pain is amplified by the barely healed cane marks. He makes himself breath through it, trying to get a handle on the sudden worry in his gut.

“This is not the time for smart remarks,” Mikhail says calmly. “I will ask you questions, and you will answer. If I feel you are lying to me, I will strike you. For the first lie, I will strike once. After that, I will double them. If you move from this position, I will strike you once more.” Mikhail walks around him in a slow circle. “Do you understand?”

“Yeah.” This time the leather strikes his side, and he yelps again, curling away from it. “Yes, sir,” he corrects himself, trying to settle into a good headspace. This is just an interrogation. He can do this.

Another hit to his other side. Clint manages to cut off his scream, looking up at Mikhail. “I—”

“Were your instructions unclear?”

_If you move from this position, I will strike you once more._

“No, sir,” he says with resignation. “They were clear.”

“Good. Do not forget them again.” Mikhail stands in front of him. “What is your middle name?”

Clint looks up. “We already—” Mikhail raises the leather, and he barely stops himself from flinching. “Francis!”

“Your parent’s names?”

“Harold and Edith.”

Mikhail nods. “Tell me about your childhood. Where did you grow up?”

“Iowa. Little town in the cornfields.”

“And what did your father do?”

 _Beat us, mostly._ “He was a butcher.”

“And your mother?”

Clint closes his eyes. “Secretary, until he stopped her from working. Then she was just a housewife.”

He always tries to remember her in a good light. There were some good moments between them, ones that weren't colored by bruises and tears. He remembers with particular fondness an afternoon spent in the kitchen, helping her make cookies for a book club meeting. The cookies had come out terribly—Clint had added salt instead of sugar—and she'd just laughed. And then they'd tried again.

She’d been happy, for once. Smiling. Not scared. Not hurting. 

“You miss her,” Mikhail says, reading his expression.

Clint shakes his head. “No.”

The leather strikes his chest, and he has to take a moment to encourage his lungs to keep breathing. “I _don’t_ ,” he finally says again, meeting Mikhail’s eyes. “She died when I was a kid. I barely remember her.” His arm raises, and Clint winces. “I wish she could have been more,” he says quickly, hoping that’s enough.

Mikhail lowers his arm. “What she could have been?”

“She was a scared woman,” Clint says. “I don't blame her. Not anymore. It wasn’t her fault.”

“Blame her for what?”

They’re treading close to uncomfortably personal territory, but he knows that’s Mikhail’s goal. He knows he can’t avoid it, either. Better to talk about his shitty childhood than talk about SHIELD. “The drinking. Not helping us.”

“Your father liked to drink?”

Clint laughs bitterly. “Yeah. You could say that.”

“And what was he like, when he was drinking?”

“He was an asshole.” Clint shivers a little. “And he hit us.”

“Us,” Mikhail says. “Your brother, yes? Barney?”

“Me. Him. Mom. Anyone and everything within reach.”

_Get outta here, squirt. Dad’s pissed off again. Better not let him see you._

“So your mother couldn’t protect you,” Mikhail says thoughtfully, walking around him. “And you resent her for this?”

“What?” Clint turns his head. “No, I don’t. I just said it wasn’t her fault.”

“You said you wish she could have been more. What more could she have been?”

“I don’t know.”

Two hits for that. Clint grits his teeth. “She wasn’t really a mom,” he says. “She was too scared all the time.”

“You wish she would have stopped him?”

“She wouldn’t have been able to. No one could. Not when he got mad.”

“But you wanted her to.”

“I wanted everyone to.” He winces. “And no one did. But it doesn’t matter anyway.”

“Why not?”

He lets another bitter laugh out. “Because you can’t depend on other people to keep you safe.”

Mikhail gently touches his head. “Can’t you?”

“You—” Clint immediately cuts the sound off, but not before Mikhail hears it.

“I what, _ptichka_?”

 _You aren’t keeping me safe,_ is what he wants to say. But he just shakes his head. “Nothing, sir.”

Four hits. Clint doesn’t move, but it’s a close call. The last one lands on his left forearm. He can see a welt forming barely seconds after the leather pulls away. “Tell me,” Mikhail orders. It’s as calm as every other word, but there’s an iron backbone in the command.

“You let Lukas hurt me,” Clint says. Less accusatory than his other sentence.

“I told you to give Lukas what he wanted,” Mikhail says. “I told you he was ruthless and creative, and that defying him would only see you broken for the trouble.” He slides the leather strip under Clint’s chin, gently pulling his head up. “Was I wrong?”

There’s a cold chill down his spine. “No, sir,” Clint whispers, not meeting his eyes.

“You were warned of the risks. What happened to you after that was your fault,” Mikhail says. “Do you agree with this?”

He shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t. But it sounds so _reasonable_ , like something Coulson would say. Like something Natasha would say. The lesson Mikhail has been trying to teach him is the same one they’ve been telling him his whole life. Actions have consequences. How is this scenario any different?

“It was my fault,” he says, the words leaden on his tongue.

“Good,” Mikhail says approvingly. “You are learning.” He kneels in front of Clint, gently placing a hand on the side of his face. “And I will always keep you safe, _ptichka_ , when your actions allow me to. Do you believe this?”

Clint meets those brown eyes. “Yes, sir,” he says softly, and Mikhail smiles.

“Let us continue, then,” he says, standing back up. “So. Your father hit you. What did he use?”

Clint regathers his thoughts. “Uh…everything? I don’t remember exactly. He liked his belt because it was easy.” He eyes the leather strip. “But really he used whatever was in reach. Once he threw a lamp at me. Lacerated my skull. I had to get stitches."

“This happened frequently?”

“We ran out of lamps at some point.” He looks up, a little worried that the sarcasm—albeit a weak attempt—will irritate Mikhail, but the other man just chuckles. Clint forces his own little smile. “Yeah. Happened every day usually. We learned to hide when we could, and run if we couldn’t.”

“What else did he do to you?”

That one is harder to answer. Clint thinks for a long time. “He burned me,” he finally says, shuddering a little. "With a cigar "

“That is cruel,” Mikhail says, sympathy and pity intertwining. "When was that?"

Clint curls his fingers into fists. “I was six,” he says. “He wanted me to get him a beer.” He closes his eyes. “I spilled it. Interrupted his poker game. His friends held me down, and he put out his cigar on my shoulder. That was the first time. It was the worst.”

“Why is that one the worst?”

_“You stupid fucking kid,” his father snarls, shoving Clint to the side. “Can’t do one fucking thing right, I swear to God.” He grips Clint’s shirt, his favorite shirt, so hard that he tears it at the collar._

_“I’m sorry,” Clint cries, twisting away. “Please, Dad. I’m sorry!”_

_“You’re gonna be sorry.” Dad lifts him up, dropping him face-down onto the table. “Curtis, hold him down. Get his fucking shirt out of the way.”_

_Clint doesn’t understand, he doesn’t know what’s happening, but he is so, so scared. “Barney!” he screams. “BARNEY!”_

_“Your brother’s not gonna do shit.” There’s a ripping sound, and the feel of cool air on his back. “Shut the fuck up and take your punishment like a man.”_

_“Harold,” says a softer voice. “Harold, please. He’s just a child!”_

_“Get the fuck out,” Dad says. “You know better than to come in here, Edith. Get OUT!”_

_Clint looks up in time to see a flash of blonde hair disappearing behind the closing door. “Mama!” he shouts, but it doesn’t open again. “MAMA!”_

_“Quit your goddamn yelling,” his father orders._

_“MAMA!” Clint shouts again. “Mama, HELP ME!”_

_The door stays closed. The men laugh. The burning cigar touches his skin._

_Clint screams._

“Clint,” Mikhail prods, and Clint blinks himself back to the present. He’s surprised to find his cheeks wet.

“Sorry,” he says, pulling his eyes back up to Mikhail. “I…uh…sorry.”

“Why is that one the worst, Clint?”

“Because no one helped,” he says. “I was _six years old_ and screaming, and they just fucking laughed.”

“They?”

“His poker friends. More assholes. I used to think that if someone could just _see_ what he was doing to us, they'd stop him. But instead they held me down and listened to me scream and they didn’t do a goddamn thing. No one ever did anything to help us.”

“That is a harsh lesson to learn so young,” Mikhail murmurs, and his hand gently touches the barely visible scar. “Is this it?”

“Yeah.” Clint shivers a little under the gentle touch. Most of his others are gone now, healed or tucked into the background of other scars. That's the only one left.

Mikhail draws his hand back. “Thank you for telling me this. I know that was difficult.” He comes around in front of Clint. “I am sorry you had to go through that.”

Clint shrugs. “It could have been worse.”

That earns him a light slap, barely more than a stinging brush. “Do not discount your experiences, Clint. What you endured was painful. You have every right to be hurt.”

 _That_ actually does sound reasonable. His mandatory SHIELD psych exams told him the same thing. Still, it sounds strange coming from Mikhail. “Sorry, sir”

Soft fingers rub over his scar. “What happened to your father? Is he still alive?”

Clint shakes his head. “Car crash. Got him and Mom both. He was drunk.”

Mikhail makes a sympathetic noise. “How old were you?”

“Young. I don't remember exactly. Eight or nine, probably.”

“And then?”

“Foster homes for a few months, for both of us. Those didn't take, so we did a couple years at an orphanage. Nowhere was any better.”

“And after that?”

“The circus, I guess.”

“The circus?” Mikhail asks, a little incredulous.

“The circus,” Clint confirms. He can’t help the little smile that plays over his lips. As shitty as things had ended, he’d spent some good years there. “Trust me, I know how it sounds.”

“How did you end up with a circus?”

_“Barney. Look.”_

_His brother looks down the street. “It’s just a circus, squirt.”_

_“I’ve never been to a circus.” Clint tugs on his arm. “Can we go?”_

_“We don’t have any money.”_

_A third voice interrupts them. “Well, don’t let that stop you.” It’s a man with a bow in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other. He flashes them a drunken smile. “If you’re willing to work a little, I can get you in.”_

_Clint jumps up eagerly, but Barney pulls him down. “Define work,” he says suspiciously._

_“Roustabouts,” the man says. “Helping us set shit up. The tents. The acts. Can always use an extra pair of hands. You work, you see the circus for free. That do you?”_

_“We get paid?” Barney asks._

_“You get a free entry and a meal,” the man says, taking a swig of his whiskey. “If you stick around for awhile, you might get some pennies.”_

_Clint looks up at his brother. “I’m hungry,” he whispers, and Barney nods._

_“Food first,” he says. “Then we’ll set up whatever you want.”_

_“Great.” The man takes a stumbling step forward. “I’m Buck Chisholm,” he says, tucking the whiskey under his arm and offering a hand. “But they call me Trick Shot.”_

_“I’m Barney. This is Clint.”_

_“Nice to meet you boys.” He shakes their hands, then gestures them forward. “Follow me.”_

“A chance encounter with one of the acts. We needed food. He was willing to let us work for it.”

Mikhail looks thoughtful. “I see.” He taps the leather on his hand. “What happened to your brother?”

“He’s dead,” Clint says shortly.

“I know. Tell me more.”

“There’s not more to tell. He got into some bad shit, he paid for it, and now he’s dead.” He tries to keep his voice even, but he’s pretty sure the anger slips through. He’s not really sure if Barney is actually dead, but he sure as hell isn’t going to try and figure out otherwise.

“Tell me,” Mikhail commands. “What happened between you?”

Clint shakes his head, trying to think of an answer that will appease Mikhail without giving too much away. “I don’t know.”

Eight hits. _Guess he wasn’t kidding about the doubling._ He flinches at the last two despite himself, which earns him two more. The last one catches on a previous mark. He doesn’t bother trying to hold back the agonized shout.

“There will be no secrets between us,” Mikhail says when he’s done. The leather touches a new welt, and Clint hisses in pain. A trickle of blood runs down his chest. “You can deny this, but it is the truth. I want to know everything, no matter how hard it is to remember.”

Clint forces in a few deep breaths. “He’s _dead_ ,” he grits out. “Why does it matter how or why he died?”

“Because it still affects you, _ptichka_. And what affects you, affects me.” The leather gently taps against his shoulder. “Please do not make me strike you again.”

Clint pulls away from the leather. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

“I know.” The words are soft. Understanding. Mikhail kneels in front of him. “I know, Clint. It is hard to handle painful memories. But until you do so, they will remain sharp enough to cut yourself on.”

Another SHIELD psych tactic. _Agent Barton, repressing memories and anger is not a healthy way to live. You have to learn to deal with these emotions._

He blinks away tears and looks at Mikhail’s shoes. “He left me.”

“Why?”

A half-hearted shrug. “He wanted to join the Army. He told me to come with him. I said I wanted him to stay. But he went anyway. Then he joined the FBI, and he got wrapped up in some double agent scheme, and he died.”

Clint leaves off the rest of the story, but Mikhail seems to accept what he’s given. He lays a hand on Clint’s shoulder. “You feel abandoned by him.”

“He was the only family I had left,” Clint says, feeling an unexpected lump of emotion well in his throat. As angry as he is for Barney trying to kill him that one time, he still loves his brother. Still misses him a little bit, when things are darkest. “Everyone fucking leaves me.”

A tear slips from his eye and he quickly wipes it away, then freezes in horror with his hand by his face. “I’m sorry,” he says, dropping it back to his side. “I didn’t mean to move. I’m sorry.”

“That is alright,” Mikhail says. There’s something in his voice that Clint can’t quite pick up on, but he can’t make himself look up to see what it is. “We can be done for the moment, I think.” He sets the leather strip on the bed and sits next to it. “Come here, Clint.”

Clint slowly crawls over and sits in front of him. “I’m sorry,” he says again, although he’s not really sure what for.

“Do not trouble yourself,” Mikhail says. “I appreciate what you have shared with me today, Clint. I know it was not an easy task.” He leans forward and swipes his thumb over Clint’s cheek, wiping away another tear track. “I will not leave you,” he says more softly, almost like he doesn’t mean for it to be heard. “I take care of what is mine.”

Clint should probably protest that. He doesn’t belong to anyone. But he just finds himself nodding slowly, his head pressed against Mikhail’s knee. Mikhail, for all his other faults, has at least proven that much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hear that splintering sound? That's Clint Barton's psyche, slooooooooowly cracking.


	26. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But Mikhail is neither of those. He is the spider waiting in a web for his prey to come to him. Lukas and Boris both sought control. He is looking to own. Mikhail will tangle Clint Barton up with rewards and punishments and praise and denial until the only thing that he can see is Mikhail standing above him, and he will be grateful for the sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, you all wanted to be in Mikhail's head, and I'm nothing if not obliging.

_It was my fault._

Mikhail has to fight to keep the smile from his face. It would be unseemly for a top HYDRA agent to walk through the base while grinning like a madman.

_It was my fault._

Weeks of work. Endless hours of planning and convincing and playing the good man. Days spent wondering what exactly it would take to shatter Clint Barton. Mikhail is impressed, in a way. Most would have broken under the whip the first time. Clint did not even show signs of cracking until after nearly sixty hours of sleep deprivation and the murder of his colleagues.

_It was my fault._

Clint has capitulated before. Bent to his commands. Obeyed his orders, spoken or not. But this is the first true breaking. For the first time, Mikhail can see beneath the hard shell of the SHIELD agent to the softer, more vulnerable soul underneath.

It is only the first, of course. Clint will have to be broken again, several times, before he will be anything Mikhail can work with. But now there are cracks in the armor, and Mikhail has always been good at manipulating those.

He thinks about what he learned just now. The boy is touch-starved. Praise-starved. He hangs on the idea of being wanted, as much as he protests and recoils at the words. Mikhail remembers how Clint’s hand curled around his ankle when Lukas came to visit, how the touch of skin calmed the skittish agent. He is Mikhail’s already, even if he doesn’t know it.

Mikhail finally steps into his office. It is not as large as the one in Russia, but truthfully he prefers this one. The technology here is much more advanced, and the monitor that displays Clint’s cell does not take up nearly so much room.

“Hello, Lukas,” he says, acknowledging the man standing in shadow on the other side of the room. “What brings you to my office?”

“You are irritated with me.” Lukas steps forward. “I am here to make this right between us.”

Mikhail considers this. He is irritated with Lukas, but not as much as he was several hours ago. Clint’s breaking has lightened his mood considerably.

Still, one should never throw away an opportunity like this. Especially not with Lukas. So he crosses his arms and says, “The agent was my project, Lukas.”

“I know.” He steps forward again. “I am truly sorry, Mikhail. I did not want it to go this way.” He tilts his head. “But he trusts you, now, does he not?”

“He fears you,” Mikhail corrects. “That is not quite the same.”

“I know what I have been seeing. He trusts you. Even if he does not want to admit it.”

_It was my fault._

“He has broken a little,” Mikhail admits. “He told me what you did to him was his own fault.”

“Did he believe it?”

“Yes.”

Lukas smiles at this. It is thin, and sharp, and the sight of it sends a chill down Mikhail’s spine. “So you are making progress,” he says. “Despite my interruption.”

Mikhail shrugs. “He will put himself back together. They always do. He will have to be broken again.”

The thin smile is still there. “Many times, I suspect,” he says. “He reminds me of you. How many times did I have to break you before you accepted the reality of things?”

 _Many times,_ Mikhail thinks, but he does not say this. Instead, he changes the subject. “I would like to take Clint to the shooting range.”

This gives Lukas pause. “Why?”

“Because I would like to see the extent of his abilities. I suspect he has some formidable talents that he is hiding from us.”

Lukas nods. “And if he shoots you?”

“I did not shoot _you_ ,” Mikhail says, opening one of the drawers on his desk.

“Because Boris was there, and he would have killed you slowly for it.”

Mikhail pulls out a requisition form. He will have to have special permission for a bow and arrow. Lukas can sign it for him. “That is true.”

“You will need guards, then. You may use the Soldier, if you’d like. He will keep your charge in line.”

Mikhail considers for a second, sorely tempted if only for the image it would lend—even broken and beaten, his agent is not a man to be tangled with—but decides against it. He does not like the way Clint and the Soldier have been interacting. He cannot put his finger on it, but there is a…familiarity of the way they speak to each other. A strange sort of knowing. It is better if they are kept apart. “I do not think that would be a wise use of the Soldier’s time,” he says carefully, not wanting to offend Lukas’s peace offer. “I will make do with other guards. I think five will be enough.” He catches Lukas’s eye. “Not Natov.”

Mikhail keeps his body language relaxed, but allows the cold fury to color his voice. Lukas nods once, his palms open in an apologetic gesture. “Not Natov,” he agrees. “We will need to keep them apart. Their interaction is an unneeded risk.”

“They should have been kept apart in the first place.” He takes a deep breath. “I am not irritated that you interfered, Lukas. I am irritated at how you chose to do it. Or rather, how you let others do it for you.”

“It was too far,” Lukas agrees, surprising Mikhail. “I should have stopped it.” He gives Mikhail a significant look. “I should have stopped all of them.”

Mikhail scrawls his signature on the form, then hands it to Lukas along with a pen. “Sign.”

Lukas reads the form and raises his eyebrows. “A bow and arrow?”

“He took down a number of my men with that alone. And I suspect if the gun had not jammed, he would have brought down a number more. His talent for aiming is quite extraordinary.” He remembers Clint throwing the box of paralyzers into the vent, following it up with a wide grin. “He has so much potential, Lukas. I can feel it. He will break, in time. I have already found multiple triggers to work with.”

Lukas signs the paper and gives him a thoughtful look. “You will need a target,” he says.

“What?”

“For the arrows. You will need a target.” He hands the paper to Mikhail and stores the pen in his own pocket. “I have changed my mind. You should take Natov.”

Mikhail blinks at this, then nods slightly. “I understand.”

Lukas moves towards the door. “Let me know how else I may assist you,” he says. “And submit the request. You will have your bow by the end of the day.”

“Thank you, Lukas.”

The other man dips his head, then steps out the door. He pauses there, with one foot in the hallway. “Mikhail.”

“Yes?” Mikhail sits in his chair and looks up, meeting the other man’s eyes.

“I meant to tell you this before. Boris is stationed here as well."

Mikhail goes very still. "Is he?"

"He has been for several months. At this point I am afraid he has...outlived his usefulness as one of us.” His gaze is solemn. “I was going to have the Soldier take care of it, but I think you might be better suited to the task.”

Mikhail absorbs this information, slowly turning it over in his mind. Finally, he taps a single finger on the polished wood of his desk. “Does he still drink scotch?”

“Every night.” Lukas smiles again. “He could use a companion.”

“Thank you.” Mikhail leans back in his chair, quietly turning options over in his mind. “I will consider it.”

Lukas leaves, then, and the door closes behind him. Mikhail sits still for a long time before reaching down and slowly pulling open the lowest drawer on his left. From his pocket he pulls out a leather glove, then slides it on his left hand. He extracts a small black cloth bag from the depths of the blackness within. It is small enough to fit in his fist, but he just barely holds the edges of it, not wanting to contact any more of it than he has to.

Then he settles into his chair, taps his gloved finger rhythmically on the table, and thinks.

Later, Mikhail finds himself in the mess hall, staring down a series of semi-empty tables. Soldiers sit grouped together in twos and threes, like small flocks of birds together for safety. There is a subtle air of tension that is always around HYDRA common spaces. Everyone is friendly here, but nobody is a friend.

He easily spots Boris, despite not having seen him for nearly five years. The man is in a corner with his back to a wall, seated with a bottle of scotch and a a tumbler in front of him. He still has the distinctive handlebar mustache that Mikhail remembers so well, and the same ruddy complexion. His hair is grayer, and a little longer, but this face is etched deeply into Mikhail’s memory. He will never forget what Boris looks like.

He smiles as Mikhail makes his way towards him and gives a slightly wobbly toast with the glass. “Ah, young Mikhail! It is good to see you! It has been far too long.”

“Boris,” Mikhail says, seating himself across the table. “How are you?”

“Wonderful.” He takes another drink. “Absolutely wonderful.”

“How is your wife?”

“Bah.” He waves a hand. “Old and fat.”

Mikhail allows a small smile on his face. “And your mistress?”

“Young and beautiful!” He toasts again and drinks. “Come, Mikhail. Share with me.”

“Not tonight, Boris. I am working.”

Boris waves his hand again. “Yes. I’ve heard you have taken on a _ptichka_ of your own.” He laughs. “Tell me, does he try to fly as much as you did? You were so determined to leave us!”

“He has tried several times to fly,” Mikhail admits. “But we have corrected him.”

“We?”

“Lukas and I.”

“Ah, Lukas.” Boris toasts for a third time. “Another old friend I don’t see enough of these days.” He drains the glass, then pours another. “So have you come to me for help? I have many good ideas to make little birds fall in line.” He winks at Mikhail. “I am sure you remember. You screamed very loudly for me.”

“I remember very clearly,” Mikhail says, and he has to force his voice to stay loose and relaxed, even as his muscles tense. “Your methods are…particular.”

Boris sets the glass on the table. “You were one of my favorites, you know.”

“I am aware.” Mikhail slides his left hand out of sight and allows it to clench in a tight fist, which helps to keep the anger off his face. Even drunk, Boris is a formidable opponent. And it would not do for an officer to start a fight in the middle of the mess hall.

Still, he has to fight the urge to punch Boris’s fat mouth as he continues to talk. Mikhail lets the words wash over him, knowing that if he truly listens, he will have to spend the next several nights digging himself out of old nightmares. He has felt those large hands on his body enough for a lifetime. He does not need to feel them in his dreams as well.

The one-sided conversation continues. Mikhail makes the appropriate noises and smiles in all the correct places. Then _finally_ , in the middle of describing his favorite session with Mikhail, Boris lets out a deep, hacking cough. “Excuse me,” he says, thumping his chest with one great fist. “Must have gone down the wrong pipe.” He coughs again, the sound wet and rasping.

“No,” Mikhail says shortly. “It has not.”

Boris coughs again, casting him a quizzical look. “What?”

“You are coughing,” Mikhail says. “And your chest feels tight. There is a burning sensation in your throat. You thought it was the alcohol at first, but now you are not certain. Your vision is starting to become blurry. Your mouth is dry.”

With every word, Mikhail watches Boris’s face pale. When he stops talking, Boris stares at him, his mouth agape. “What…?” he starts again, but then he stops to cough. It is worse this time. A deeper, hacking sound. It sounds gruesome. It sounds painful.

Mikhail smiles.

When Boris stops, he straightens and points a finger at Mikhail. “You poisoned me?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Mikhail leans forward. “It is a deadly compound from our science team. They are ever so creative, you know. It is an unusually deadly combination of poisons that eats through skin, muscle, and bone at the slightest contact with any of them.” He picks up the bottle and carefully examines the liquid inside. “They told me a single pinch would be enough. I wanted to be sure, so I added the whole bag. I am surprised it took this long. I suspect the liquid diluted it some. It is good I added more.”

Another coughing fit. Then, “Why?” The word is full of hurt, and betrayal, and terror.

“Why?” Mikhail laughs bitterly. “Do you remember the day you broke my leg?”

The larger man nods, his eyes wide with fear.

“You broke it, and then you chained me to the wall. And then you called in your friends.” Mikhail holds up his open hand, showing five fingers. “Five times, they took me. One each. Then you unchained me, and you made me crawl to them and beg for more. And you laughed.”

Boris wheezes, his throat tightening. “But—”

“No.” Mikhail stands, pushing his chair back with such force that it falls over. The sound rings loudly in the mostly quiet hall, drawing more attention to their small corner. “No, Boris. You do not get to make excuses. Not this time. I told you that day that I would kill you. That you would not see it coming. That one day you would be enjoying your life, and then I would descend like thunder and snatch the breath from your lungs.” He puts his palms on the table and leans down, his face mere inches from the other man’s. “Tell me, Boris. Who is laughing now?”

Mikhail pushes back from the table and walks out of the mess hall, leaving Boris to choke and cough and die behind him. The man does not deserve an audience to his demise. He can die alone.

In his office, there is a bow and a quiver of arrows laying on his desk, and a note from Lukas. _Tomorrow. 0700._

He runs his fingers over the bowstring, imagining Clint pulling it back and firing. A smiles flits over his face. Yes. This will be perfect. He will describe it as a reward for Clint’s recent good behavior, and use it to widen those cracks a little. To cement his position in Clint’s psyche.

Boris had gotten it all wrong with him. There must be both punishment and reward when trying to break someone. Boris had been like a hammer, striking and striking until he got results. Lukas had been more insidious, slipping past Mikhail’s defenses with his own type of cruelty and cunning. If Boris was the lumbering bear, then Lukas was the fox. Of the two, Lukas had been far more successful.

But Mikhail is neither of those. He is the spider waiting in a web for his prey to come to him. Lukas and Boris both sought control. He is looking to _own_. Mikhail will tangle Clint Barton up with rewards and punishments and praise and denial until the only thing that he can see is Mikhail standing above him, and he will be grateful for the sight.

 _It has already begun,_ Mikhail thinks, sitting in his chair. Step one was to alter Clint’s perception of the truth. Now he will build the bond between them. And he knows just how to start.

Mikhail picks up the phone on his desk and dials a number, then waits patiently. “Send Natov to my office,” he says, when a voice on the other end makes a query. “I have an important job for him.” He sets the phone back in the cradle, then reaches down into his right desk drawer. He pulls out his own bottle of scotch and a tumbler, then pours some and takes a small sip.

He thinks about his own breaking, then, as he swirls the scotch around the glass. His days under Lukas’s thumb, desperately trying to cling to a worldview that did not matter. His time with Boris, painful and frightening and horrific. Then he thinks about Boris, choking and dying all alone, and he smiles widely, feeling his mood lift immensely.

Yes. He knows _exactly_ where to start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little more background on our favorite resident bad guy. Back to Clint next time!


	27. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s no targets. Nothing to hit. Clint looks at him, then looks at the gun. His knees ache with remembered pain, and he knows that this time, there will be no resistance from him.

Clint is doing laps around his room when Mikhail opens the door to his cell and offers him a wide smile. “Good morning, little bird. You are looking well.”

“Morning,” Clint says, pausing in his walking. Mikhail is holding a bowl of something, and the leather strap is nowhere in sight. He relaxes a little. “What’s that?”

“Porridge,” Mikhail says. “Here.” He extends it out in front of him, like a peace offering. Clint thinks briefly about making some quip about being allowed to feed himself, but decides against it. He takes the bowl and sits on the bed.

“It’s good,” he lies after a few mouthfuls.

Mikhail waves a dismissive hand. “No, it is not.”

Clint chuckles. “No. It’s not.” He finishes the bowl anyway, scraping the last bits out of the bottom before setting it aside. He needs every calorie he can get. “So, what wild tortures are we up to today?”

This gets him a long-suffering sigh. “I do not torture you, Clint. We have discussed this.”

“Right. Sorry.” He shifts uncomfortably, unsure if he’s irritated Mikhail. “Really. I am.”

“However, to answer your question, I am here to take you somewhere. I am sure you would like to get out of this room.”

“I’d _love_ to get out of this room.” He looks past Mikhail, through the slightly open door into the hallway. “Where’s the chair?”

“We will walk.” Mikhail gestures him up. “It isn’t far.”

Clint looks down at his bare feet, then reaches out and pulls his socks on before slowly standing. The burns have mostly healed, but he might as well protect them for as long as he can. “Where are we going?”

“You will see.” Mikhail opens the door wider. “Come.”

Clint hesitantly steps towards the door, then pauses. “You’re not gonna…” He touches his wrists, not really wanting to put the idea in Mikhail’s head.

“Are you planning on going somewhere?” Mikhail asks. His tone is light, but his face is very serious.

_I make no promises,_ he starts to say, then stops, remembering what happened the last time he said that. He touches his long-healed split lip, then shakes his head. “No. I’m not.”

“Then we can go,” Mikhail says, and he gestures Clint out the door.

Clint follows him down the hallway, stumbling a little on his still-unsteady legs. There’s something…different about Mikhail, he decides. A slight spring to his step. He’s not happy, but there’s something lighter in his features. He looks more at ease with the world.

Mikhail notices him staring and offers a slight smile. “If you have another question, you may ask it.”

“I was just wondering where you get your hair done,” Clint says. “It’s very military. Very uptight.”

Mikhail actually laughs at this. “You appear to be in a good mood today.”

“Well, no one’s come to hit me with anything, so it’s been a decent morning.” He pauses. “You’re not taking me somewhere to hit me, are you?”

Another laugh. “No.”

“Good.” He looks around at the drab hallway. “I see you design all the bases the same way.”

“It certainly makes things easier.”

“How do you know where you’re going?” Clint is genuinely curious about this. He doesn’t see any markings or signs. Not that he’s expecting to see EVIL LAB THIS WAY or something, but still. Mikhail makes turns with insane ease. “Don’t you get lost?”

“I lived here for many years before I was assigned to Russia. I know this base quite well.” They turn down another hallway, this one a little wider. “Not much has changed in that time.”

Clint absorbs this information. “When were you here?”

“Nearly ten years ago.” He stops before a set of double doors, then holds up a hand to pause Clint. “Before we go in, I would make my expectations clear.”

“Yes, sir,” Clint says, stepping back. It takes him a moment to realize he’s standing to attention, like he would for Fury or Coulson. Feet together, posture stiff. It’s almost alarming, how he’s now unconsciously putting Mikhail in that same category.

_It’s just survival,_ his mind whispers. _You’re just giving him what he wants._

It doesn’t slip Mikhail’s notice either. No comment is made, but there’s a proud note in his voice. “You will obey every order without question or hesitation.”

There’s an expectant pause, and Clint belatedly answers, “Yes, sir.”

“You will not shoot at anything you have not been given clearance to aim at.”

“Yes, sir.”

_Wait. Shoot?_

“No matter who else is in there, you will conduct yourself in the manner I have taught you.”

“Yes, sir.” He answers automatically, still fixated on the shooting.

“If you fail to obey any of my commands, there will be extremely painful consequences for you. Consider this your one and only warning.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mikhail gives him one last look, then pushes open one of the doors, revealing an exceedingly enormous shooting range. Clint steps through after him. His eyes go immediately to the targets at the far end of the room, noting their distance. Then Mikhail gently touches his shoulder and directs his attention to the table a few paces away. There’s an impressive array of weapons laid out on it. Guns, rifles, axes, knives.

A bow. Twelve arrows. Clint doesn’t bother to conceal his grin.

“You’re actually going to let me shoot?” He glances at the other occupants of the room. Seven heavily armed, antsy-looking guards. Natov is not among them. And in the far corner, Lukas. Clint fights down the wave of fear at his appearance and fixes on Mikhail. “You’re not fucking with me?”

“I would like to see your skills,” Mikhail says simply. “If we are going to train you, I will need to know what you are capable of.” He raises an eyebrow. “Do you have an objection?”

Clint shakes his head, deciding this is not the moment to argue about _training_. “No, sir.”

“Do I need to remind you of my expectations?”

“Obey your orders, don’t shoot at anything without permission, behave myself.” Clint taps a foot eagerly. “May I, sir?”

“You may.” Mikhail waves him towards the table. “Start with the closest target. You may start with your choice of weapon. You will be demonstrating all of them at some point.”

Clint nods and steps forward, reaching immediately for the bow. Then he pauses, reconsidering. _Should probably save the best for last._

He gets the knives instead. Picks them up and weighs them in his hand. Looks over at Lukas, who is watching with an impassive expression. As soon as his head turns that way, all seven guards flinch towards their weapons. Clint bites back a grin and turns back to the target.

He throws one at a time. The first one lands dead center of the top ring, the handle vibrating slightly. He nods in satisfaction, then throws the second. Another hit, directly below the first.

The next three all land exactly where he wants them, although the final one looks slightly off. It wasn’t really weighted properly. Clint scowls a little and moves onto the handgun. He inspects it, then carefully loads the clip and pulls it back. It makes a very satisfying sound in his hand. A little small for him, but he can deal.

This time when he looks at Lukas, all the guards pull their weapons, fingers ready on half a dozen triggers. The seventh guard looks a little more at ease, although still ready for action. A veteran, likely. Clint would recognize that battle-ready look anywhere. There’s a beat of understanding between them, two warriors acknowledging the other’s skills and experience.

“Agent Barton,” Mikhail says sternly, and Clint flinches, turning his head opposite to look at Mikhail.

“I didn’t do anything,” he says, feeling like a child under that piercing gaze.

“Not for lack of desire,” Lukas says from his corner. He moves then, coming to stand next to Clint. “I do not mind, little bird. Go ahead and shoot me. I will die knowing your last hours will make our previous interrogation look like a relaxing afternoon.”

Clint shudders and looks over at Mikhail instead. “Same target, sir?”

“Next one.”

This one is at the same distance. Clint fires rapidly, emptying the clip, and bores a hole in the center of the target. It’s child’s play, practically, and he feels a slight swell of irritation. He’s better than this. Why is he showing off for these assholes?

_Because you don’t have any other choices?_ Natasha’s voice is warm and silky in his ear, and he closes his eyes before firing the last three shots. He doesn’t have to look to know they landed.

“Interesting,” Mikhail says, coming to stand on his other side. He hands Clint another clip and points. “Hit the numbers this time. Nothing else.”

Clint loads the clip and studies the target, then fires just as rapidly as the first time. Small holes appear in the distant numbers. There’s a murmur of interest behind him, and he glances back to see the veteran guard lean forward, eyes fixed on the target.

“Good.” Mikhail takes the handgun. “Next weapon.”

He hits every shot easily. After a few rounds, they start giving him targets that aren’t even on the paper. Hit the window. Hit the gunpowder mark on the far wall. Hit the half-inch gap between the bricks. Hit this. Hit that. He doesn’t miss a single mark. Even Lukas is looking somewhat impressed.

Finally, Mikhail holds up a hand. “The bow,” he says, and Clint sets down the rifle and picks up the bow. It’s a recurve. Nothing special. Not as nice as his one at home— _stop thinking about home, dammit—_ or even like the one from his escape. But it’ll do. He nocks an arrow and glances over at Mikhail, waiting for his instructions.

Mikhail looks over his shoulder. “Bring him out,” he says to the veteran guard, and Clint tilts his head in confusion. The guard nods and leaves. The others grip their weapons more tightly.

“You have been behaving well these past weeks,” Mikhail says to Clint. “I have a reward for you.”

The door opens at the far end of the range—with some difficulty, as there’s a bullet lodged in the doorknob—and two distant figures walk in. Clint’s grip tightens on the bow until his fingers ache.

Natov.

His hands are bound behind his back and he’s gagged with a rough cloth. Even at over one-hundred yards, Clint can see the terrified expression on his face. The veteran guard pushes him hard, making him stumble and fall to one knee.

“What the fuck is this,” Clint says to Mikhail. It’s a rhetorical question, more than anything. He knows exactly what this is.

“This is your reward, Clint,” Mikhail says. “You may kill him.”

Clint looks at the man. He’s sweating, the sheen visible even at this distance. The veteran guard is a short distance away from him, gun trained on a leg. No lethal shot if he tries to run, not that there’s really anywhere for him to go.

Fuck. He does want to kill Natov. Did want to. But not like this. He shakes his head slowly and relaxes his grip on the bow with some effort. “No.”

“No?” Mikhail sounds surprised. “What do you mean?”

“I mean no.” He sets the bow on the table. “I’m not an executioner.”

“You are what we tell you to be,” Lukas says. “Kill him. Now.”

“No.” He steps away from the table. “I won’t do it.”

“Clint.” Mikhail takes his arm, stopping him from going further. “This is a reward for you. A chance for your revenge.”

Clint yanks his arm away, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in his gut. He’s fast using up his goodwill, and he knows what’s coming down the track. “I’m not your fucking puppet. You want him dead, you kill him.”

Mikhail grabs his arm again, tighter this time. He’s taller than Clint, but at this moment Clint doesn’t feel like the smaller man. He knows this road, this revenge cycle. He’s not going back down it willingly. “Agent Barton,” Mikhail says quietly. “Are you refusing a direct order?”

“Guess I am,” Clint says just as quietly, prepping himself for pain. A small part of him idly wonders if it’ll be the belt again, or something worse this time.

Mikhail sighs and steps back, letting his hand ghost over the weapons on the table. “This is your choice?”

“Yeah, sure. My choice.” Clint crosses his arms, trying to hold onto his bravado. “I’m not killing him. Not like this.”

Mikhail nods. “Alright. If that is what you wish.”

Clint blinks, surprised by the sudden acquiescence. “I—yes. Yeah.”

“Just remember,” Mikhail says, picking up the first handgun and checking the chamber. “Actions have consequences.”

“I _know_ —”

Clint doesn’t get to finish his sentence. His words cut off in a choked scream as Mikhail levels the gun and shoots him in the thigh. He falls to the ground, hand pressed to the wound out of sheer instinct.

_Guess it’s something worse._

“This was your fault,” Mikhail says, standing over him. “You were warned.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Clint snarls, breathing heavily. “Fuck you and everything you goddamn stand for.”

In response, Mikhail shoots his other leg.

****

Clint wakes up some time later in his cell, a familiar sting in his forearm and a familiar presence at his bedside.

“You shot me,” he croaks, then coughs a little.

Mikhail sets a straw by his lips. “You were warned of the consequences, Agent Barton. Everything that happened after that is your own fault.”

That doesn’t sound right, but Clint is too tired to argue. He’s still in trouble, judging from the _Agent Barton,_ and he doesn’t want to be shot again anyway. He drinks from the straw, then lifts his head enough to assess the current state of affairs.

IV in the arm. Cuffs holding his wrists to the bed. On his back, naked, covered in a sheet. Bandages around his thighs. A weird, yet familiar itching in his forearm. “Giving me the fancy stuff?”

“It speeds recovery. You will be walking by this time tomorrow.”

“Great.” He drops his head back down. “Looking forward to it.”

Sure enough, Mikhail’s prediction is true. Less than twelve hours after being shot, Clint’s wounds are raw but closed, and he’s putting weight on his legs. At twenty-four hours, Mikhail walks him back down to the range, handcuffed this time, and stands him in the same place. Natov is there again, still gagged and bound. “This is your target. Kill him.”

“No,” Clint says, and Mikhail shoots him in the legs again.

****

“This is your target. Kill him.”

“No.”

Gut shot. Three days of recovery.

****

“This is your target. Kill him.”

“No.”

Arm shot. Two days of recovery.

****

“This is your target. Kill him.”

“No.”

Knee this time. He feels his kneecap shatter and passes out almost immediately.

****

“This is your target. Kill him.”

“I don’t want to.”

Groin shot. He spends six days in sheer agony, half-delirious and hallucinating.

****

“This is your target. Kill him.”

“Please…”

“Kill him, Agent Barton.”

“Please don’t make me…”

Chest shot.

Seven days. A surgery to remove the bullet. A collapsed lung.

They don’t give him anesthesia.

Clint still has trouble taking a deep breath when Mikhail hauls him to the range again.

****

“This is your target. Kill him.”

“I…”

The bullet to his other knee is almost expected, but then the gun fires again.

Left hand. His dominant hand. It practically shatters. Clint screams. The bright red of his own blood lands in his mouth. It’s metallic. Copper. Like a penny.

_How can I shoot without my hand?_

Six days for both of them to heal. The relief of being able to move his fingers is almost palpable.

****

“This is your target. Kill him.”

Clint swallows. Takes the gun. Cocks the hammer. Fires without looking. He doesn’t need to look. He never misses.

“Good,” Mikhail says approvingly as the distant body falls. He pulls the gun from Clint’s loose grip, then fires it.

The bullet tears through Clint’s calf, a sharp pain he’s all too familiar with by now. He drops to the floor, feeling the blood well up around his fingers. “But I…” he whispers, feeling so utterly betrayed.

“You did,” Mikhail agrees. “Next time, don’t make me wait.”

The familiar words break him a little more. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, reaching out with shaking, bloody fingers. “I’m sorry, sir. Please.”

Mikhail looks down at his scrabbling hand, then shakes his head and leaves. Clint shivers on the floor until he’s retrieved by the usual medical team. They stick him with an IV, chain him to his bed, and leave him to his own devices.

For the first time in a long time, he thinks about Laura. His beautiful Laura. He’s been so good at keeping her memory away, but his defenses have been shattered and he has no way to keep her out this time. Her cool hands touch his forehead, ghost over his cheek, brush his hair back. “Stay strong,” she murmurs to him. “Come back to me.”

“I’m trying,” he whispers back.

_Then do what they want,_ someone else says, and Clint doesn’t know if its a teammate, or Mikhail, or Lukas, or his own mind.

Laura’s hands fade from his memory.

He curls onto his side, shoves his face into the mattress, and sobs.

****

The calf wound takes a day to heal. When Mikhail pulls the IV and orders him to stand, he does without a single protest. He’s led back to the range, and Mikhail puts another gun into his hand.

There’s no targets. Nothing to hit. Clint looks at him, then looks at the gun. His knees ache with remembered pain, and he knows that this time, there will be no resistance from him.

He waits. That’s all he can do.

The door opens. Not the far one. The close one. The one he came through. Someone else comes in, bound hand and foot. It’s a woman this time. Young. Red hair. She looks like Nat, but softer around the edges. She’s crying. Pleading with him.

“This is your target,” Mikhail says. “Kill her.”

Clint grips the gun in his left hand. The scars on his palm are still tender. “What did she do?”

“It does not matter. She is an enemy of HYDRA. Kill her.”

The woman’s eyes are wide. Terrified. A startling shade of green. Nat put in green contacts once. Was that Paris? Or Istanbul? He can’t remember. What color are Laura’s eyes?

“Agent,” Mikhail says warningly. “Do not make me hurt you again.”

_Respect. Honesty. Obedience. Answer questions when they ask. Don’t make them wait._

He’s so tired of learning lessons.

The gun fires.

She falls.

“Good,” Mikhail says approvingly.

Clint closes his eyes, hands the gun back, and feels himself crack just a little more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops. I think I broke him.


	28. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikhail doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t move, either. He just lets the light play on the edge of the steel. Waits for Clint to make a move. His expression is calm, but something dark glitters behind his eyes. Like a snake coiled, ready to strike.
> 
> _Actions have consequences, Agent Barton._

At some point, Clint tries to make a mental calendar of how long he’s been gone. Five days on the boat, after falling into this whole mess. Then a couple days in the first cell. Five weeks in the dark room. Another week after that. His escape, which was a grand total of maybe…two days? Probably less. He gives five days for the sleep deprivation incident. Then another week recovering from that, at least. Maybe two. The three or four weeks he’s been here.

A long time, no matter how he looks at it. Too long.

Clint idly leafs through his little Russian primer—he’s on his second one now; he’s practically _conversational_ —then drops it on the bed next to him. There’s a fury slowly roiling in him, too strong to be quenched by idle work. He wants to punch something. Every time he closes his eyes he can see that woman dropping to the floor, and he hates himself for breaking like that.

Really, he hates himself most for trusting Mikhail even the slightest bit. He’d gotten too comfortable. Too complacent with their banter. He’d really started to believe that maybe, just maybe, Mikhail liked him enough to not hurt him anymore. The feeling of betrayal had almost hurt more than the first shot.

_Stupid. So goddamn stupid._

The door to his cell opens and Clint instantly rolls onto the floor, dropping to his knees. Mikhail walks in, carrying a small black case in both hands. “Good morning,” he says in Russian to Clint.

“What’s that?”

Mikhail doesn’t answer. He just stands there, waiting, until Clint catches on and repeats the greeting. He nods in approval and gestures behind him as another soldier brings in a chair and a small table, setting them up in front of the little sink.

Clint looks at the setup warily. “I didn’t do anything,” he says softly, looking up at Mikhail.

“This is not a punishment, Clint.” Mikhail taps the chair. “Come. Sit. Remove your shirt.”

Clint pulls his shirt over his head, then seats himself in the chair. Mikhail makes an approving noise and gently swirls something around him. A cape. A barber’s cape.

Understanding comes in a flash. “You’re cutting my hair?”

“It is necessary. I imagine you agree with me.”

Clint looks in the mirror. His hair is a complete mess. The mohawk no longer exists, but the shaved parts are still shorter than the middle section. Natasha would tease him endlessly if she were here. He basically has very terrible mullet. “Yeah, okay.”

“I thought you would also appreciate a shave,” Mikhail says.

Clint turns a little in the chair to face him. “You’re gonna let me—”

Mikhail flips open a straight razor, the sharp edge of the blade catching the light in a flash. Clint swallows hard, looking at the blade, then glancing up at Mikhail.

He could grab it. He’s fast. Mikhail is stronger and probably expects him to go for it, but Clint has always been quick. He could do it. Get the blade, draw it across Mikhail’s throat. Kill him. There’s no guards to stop him this time.

_But what if you miss?_ whispers the unseen, unrecognizable voice. _What if you’re not quick enough?_

Mikhail doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t move, either. He just lets the light play on the edge of the steel. Waits for Clint to make a move. His expression is calm, but something dark glitters behind his eyes. Like a snake coiled, ready to strike.

_Actions have consequences, Agent Barton._

He can’t stop the full-body shudder that rocks through him. He turns, facing the mirror again, and tilts his head back slightly to show his neck.

Mikhail’s mouth tilts with the ghost of a smile, then he sets the blade back in the case. “Do you have a preference for your hair?”

It’s a reward for capitulating. Clint thinks for a second, then shakes his head. “No.”

“I could resume your previous style, if you wish.”

“No,” Clint says, a little more firmly. “Just short is fine.”

“Short it is.” Mikhail removes a comb and a pair of scissors from the bag, then adjusts Clint’s head slightly before getting started.

“You know what you’re doing, right?” Clint asks as Mikhail combs through his hair. “I don’t want to come out of this looking like I lost a fight with a pair of scissors or anything.”

Mikhail chuckles. “I have cut hair before. You will be fine.”

They sit in silence then, the atmosphere oddly peaceful despite the tension of earlier. Clint watches Mikhail’s careful movements in the mirror, but it does appear the man knows what he’s doing. Slowly, the matted mass on Clint’s head starts to take a more human shape.

It’s nice. The gentle fingers, the press of the comb against his head. Laura was the last person to cut his hair, a few days before he left. He closes his eyes and tries to think about sitting in their kitchen, the kids playing out back, the world slow and calm and quiet as her fingers lovingly trailed over his head.

“How is your Russian coming along?” Mikhail asks, shattering the image.

Clint opens his eyes. “Slowly.”

“It is a difficult language.” Mikhail concedes. He snips some more, then pauses. “A different approach may be needed.”

“That sounds ominous,” Clint mutters, and Mikhail smiles briefly before setting the scissors down and combing out the rest of his hair. It’s military short now, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the mop that was there before. “Hey, that’s not so bad.”

“I told you it would be fine.” Mikhail turns on the sink, then drops a towel in the hot water. Clint watches the steam rise up from it. After a moment, he picks up the towel, wrings it out, and lays it over Clint’s face.

The heat feels nice, if a bit suffocating, but Clint can’t make himself relax. He hears the _snick_ of the blade opening and his mind starts spinning, screaming at him. Vulnerable. He’s vulnerable. He can’t see what’s coming and there’s nothing to stop Mikhail from taking that blade and slitting his throat and all of this would have been for nothing all that pain and suffering and all the people that _died_ —

A soothing hand rubs over his shoulder. “Clint. Breathe.”

He tries to, but the cloth gets in the way. It’s like being waterboarded. He rips it off his face, sitting up, nearly tumbling onto the floor. His breath comes in gasps, not enough and too much all at once. His vision is spinning and he has to close his eyes to keep from vomiting everywhere.

_Hold your breath._

He holds his breath, despite the small screaming part of his brain that says otherwise. After a count of ten, he clenches his fists and draws in a slow, steady breath. Seven counts in. Eleven out. A rote count he learned from Tony years ago.

Mikhail keeps the hand on his shoulder, but doesn’t say anything. After a long time, Clint gets himself under control and carefully reseats himself in the chair. “Sorry,” he says, his voice rough. “I’m—I’m okay. I’m sorry.”

“It is alright,” Mikhail says. He picks up the towel from the floor and puts it back in the sink. “Tell me what happened.”

“Panic attack.” He rubs a hand over his face. “They happen sometimes. When I’m stressed.”

“When was the last time you had one?”

“I don’t remember.” He vaguely recalls having one after his family vanished, but then that whole time is a bit fuzzy to him. “A long time ago.”

Mikhail leans against the wall. “Why now?”

“I don’t know.” Clint presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, causing white spots to erupt across his vision. “I couldn’t see you and it freaked me out.”

“My apologies,” Mikhail says. “I forgot you have an adverse reaction to blindfolds. I should have remembered that.” He picks up the towel again.

_An adverse reaction to blindfolds, and also to you holding a weapon near me._ The scars on his body all seem to pulse in time with each other. Clint bites his tongue and allows Mikhail to put the towel back on his face, leaving his vision open this time. Mikhail lets the towel sit, warming the skin, then smears shaving foam on him. Finally, he picks up the razor. “I will start now,” he announces, and Clint barely nods. The razor touches his cheek, then scrapes down his skin in a circular motion. Mikhail makes an approving noise as Clint doesn’t move.

The tension doesn’t leave him, but Clint does eventually settle his nerves enough to unclench his hand. Mikhail and weapons make him nervous, but he’s fairly sure the other man isn’t going to suddenly slit his throat without warning. Still, it’s a heady feeling to have his life so firmly in someone else’s hands.

“Why are you doing this?” Clint asks, breaking the silence as Mikhail wipes the razor off between lines.

Mikhail starts another. “Doing what?”

“Shaving me. I—” Clint pauses until he’s done, then talks again, the words coming out in a rush. “I can do it myself.”

A few more passes, a few more moments of quiet concentration. Then Mikhail says, “I told you. I take care of things that are mine.”

“Seems like a lot of work,” Clint mutters, turning his head at the gentle press of fingers along his cheek. The scrape of the razor over the center of his throat is terrifying, and he has to clench his fists again to keep from getting up and bolting.

“You certainly are,” Mikhail agrees. He moves the razor over the last of the hairs, then turns Clint’s head, inspecting his work. “But I can think of no more worthy way to spend my time.”

He gently rubs his thumb over Clint’s bare cheek. The movement is too intimate, like the way Laura used to touch him before leaving for work. She’d kiss him gently where her fingers pressed, then leave before he was fully awake. The closeness of it here makes Clint flinch, and he twitches away from the contact. “Are we done?”

Mikhail pulls his hand back. “Yes. We are done.” He packs up his little case, then waves a hand at the little Russian primer, still sitting on the bed. “It is time to accelerate your lessons. From now on, I would like you to forgo English during our conversations.”

Clint winces. “Those are going to be short conversations then.”

“I have faith in you.”

He’s right, unfortunately. The best way to learn is immersion. And this is definitely not a battle he feels like fighting. So he just says, “ _Da_ ,” and gets out of the chair, brushing stray hairs off his neck. Then he pulls his shirt back on and sits on the bed.

“One more thing,” Mikhail says, still in English. “I would like you to start building back some muscle. I have booked some time for you in the gym. I unfortunately will not be there, but someone will come to escort you.” His voice drops slightly lower, a thin edge of foreboding running through it. “I trust I do not need to remind you to behave yourself?”

“I—no. No, sir.” Clint shakes his head. “You don’t.”

“Good.” Mikhail smiles at him. “I will be back this evening with something to eat. You may do what you wish until then.” He gathers his supplies and leaves. The door locks shut behind him.

_Generous,_ he hears Bruce mutter. _Free time, but nothing to fill it with._

Clint turns on his back and stares up at the ceiling. He’s so tired. The anger that was boiling in him is still there, but it’s dimmed to a small flame. He doesn’t have the energy to nurse his constant hatred.

It would be easier to do if Mikhail were always cruel. But it’s the little things that are getting to him. The murmured praises, the soft touches. He doesn’t trust the man. How is he supposed to juxtapose the gentle fingers against his face with the pain of a bullet tearing through his knee?

_He wouldn’t hurt you if you’d just listen,_ that quiet voice whispers. _He’s said so. He doesn’t want to be cruel. You make him do all that. It’s your fault._

“It’s not my fault,” he says aloud, his voice hollow and plaintive even to his own ears.

_You really believe that?_

A gentle hand drifts through his short hair, and Nat sits down next to him. Clint casts her an idle glance. He’s been imagining her more and more lately. Some part of him feels he should be vaguely concerned about this, but a larger part of him just revels in her presence. “You look nice,” she says, and he smiles a little. “You okay? You haven’t panicked like that in a long time.”

“I’m okay.” He rubs his index finger over his thumbnail. It’s too long. He hates long nails.

“Why didn’t you do it?” she asks him, and he has to take a moment before realizing what she means.

“Couldn’t risk it,” he says softly.

“Meaning you were too scared to try.”

“That too. If I kill him, it has to be a sure thing.”

She gives him a steady look, then says, “When.”

“What?”

“ _When_ you kill him. Not if.”

Clint buries his face in his hands for a second. “Right. When,” he says, muffled behind his palms. “When I kill him.”

Her hand settles on his back. There’s pressure, but no warmth to it. “Stay strong, Clint,” she says, mouth close to his ear, and then she’s gone again.

“I’m trying,” he says to the empty room. “I promise.”

_I just don’t know how much longer I can keep doing this._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and the cracks get wider...and wider...


	29. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint feels sick. He wants to run. Cap would run. Tony would run. They would never stay and let someone beat them down like this.
> 
> _You’re not Captain America. You’re not Tony Stark. You’re just Clint Barton. What good are you?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends! I apologize for the long delay. My old computer bit the dust and I had to purchase a new one, which took longer than I would have anticipated. :( And then I had to wait for Geek Squad to save all my stuff. Long story short, back your shit up. Seriously. 
> 
> I know you have all been waiting patiently, and so hopefully this makes up for it!

Clint half-hopes it’ll be the Winter Soldier who comes to get him for his gym time. He hasn’t seen him in weeks. The more irrational parts of him are afraid that Mikhail knows, somehow, and is keeping them apart intentionally. It’s possible. At this point, he wouldn’t put anything past the man.

“Or,” he mutters, bracing his hands on the floor and flipping into a handstand, “you’re just being paranoid. He’s probably just out on a mission.”

“Nothing wrong with being paranoid,” Nat says, reaching out to poke him in the stomach. He scowls at her and she pulls her finger back.

The door opens. He watches warily as a blonde woman steps in. Her thick hair is tied up in a braid, and she has strikingly blue eyes that he can see even from upside down across the room. There’s a serious set to her face, but when she sees the position he’s in, a vague amusement ripples across her features. “Good morning,” she says in Russian. “I am Elizaveta.”

“Hello,” Clint says, turning himself upright. She’s very beautiful—high cheekbones, smooth skin, bright red lipstick perfectly contoured to her mouth. She’s dressed in a loose white tank top and tight black pants, which show off her legs quite nicely. Clint tugs self-consciously on his bloodstained shirt and pulls his attention back to her face. “I’m Clint.”

“I know,” she says, still amused. “Mikhail sent me.”

“Oh.” He looks sideways at Nat, who shrugs. “Are you here for…”

He stops. He doesn’t know the Russian word for gym, or for sparring, or for anything else Mikhail probably wants him to do. Elizaveta seems to understand, though, because she nods and motions him to his feet.

At the door, she puts a hand on his chest to stop him, and says something in Russian that he doesn’t fully catch. At his blank look, she rolls her eyes. “Do not run away,” she says in thickly accented English. “Or I will hurt you.”

“I got it,” Clint assures her. “Mikhail gave me the talk.”

She smacks him, her hand contacting the side of his head before he can process the movement. It’s hard enough to turn his head, but there’s no venom behind it. It’s like how one of his foster moms used to hit him whenever he got too mouthy with her.

“The fuck was that for?”

Another smack, this time to the other side of his head. “English is not allowed.”

“But you—” She raises her hand, and Clint falls silent.

“I speak,” Elizaveta says, “so that you learn. English is allowed from me. Not you.”

Clint doesn’t want to get hit again, so he just nods and decides to argue later.

She doesn’t handcuff him for their short walk, but she watches him like a hawk. Not that it’s necessary, really—the last punishment is too fresh in his mind. He’s willing to be a good boy for now. Also, he really doesn’t want to be hit in the head again.

The gym is similar to SHIELD’s. It has some lifting equipment, a couple of punching bags, and a boxing ring in the center. Elizaveta puts a hand on his shoulder and pushes him that way. “Inside,” she says, first in English, and then again in Russian.

Clint climbs through the ropes and faces the overly large HYDRA symbol on the wall. Elizaveta climbs in after him. On the mat, she stands a few paces away, arms loose and posture relaxed. “You know how to fight?” she asks in English.

He nods.

“From SHIELD?”

“Friend,” he says. SHIELD had taught the basics, but Nat was the one who really honed his skills. Her hand-to-hand skills were a legend before he brought her into SHIELD, and they’d only gotten better afterward. She’d put him through an intensive training she referred to as “Red Room Lite,” which involved him spending a lot of time nursing bruises and picking himself up off the floor. But he’d come out of it with an improved skill set and a deeper friendship with Nat, so it was totally worth the seven cracked ribs.

“We will fight,” Elizaveta says, doing the double language thing again. “No permanent damage is allowed. No further rules.”

“Is there…” he struggles with the word, gesturing to his head and hands, trying to think of an appropriate word to substitute for sparring gear. “How do you say…”

“No,” she says, smirking a little. “Are you afraid?”

Her body language is relaxed, but her eyes are calculating, and Clint isn’t falling for it for a second. He sets his feet in a better position and tries to ready himself. “ _Nyet_.”

“Good.”

He strikes first, stepping in and snapping up with his left foot. She easily knocks it aside and he rolls with the momentum, turning and coming out with a swing. But she steps in close, catching the blow on her arm and slamming her own fist into his gut. He grunts and stumbles backwards, putting some distance between them.

_Okay, so she’s fast._

She closes the gap in half a breath and he manages to turn in time to catch her fist on his shoulder. From there he kicks out backward, contacting her leg. It’s not an ideal kick, but it’s enough to make her let out a hissed breath. Clint grins and finishes the turn, coming up into a guarded position. She’s back in close, and he blocks her right fist, but misses the left as it hits his head. The impact makes him dizzy, and he loses track of time long enough for her to get a foot behind his ankle and put him on the mat. She lands on top of him, straddling his hips, one hand around his throat.

“That’s it?” she asks. “SHIELD is not as formidable as it once was, I see.”

Clint tries to think of a snarky comment, but he’s distracted by the press of her hips against his. The hand around his throat isn’t helping. He’s not a particularly kinky guy or anything, but it’s been a _long_ time, and he’s only human.

Elizaveta raises an eyebrow and loosens her grip. Clint sucks in a breath and slowly rolls onto his side, then pushes up to his feet, trying to ignore the rush of blood to his groin. 

“Again,” she commands, stepping back, a slight smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.

Another close exchange, another round of blows, and Clint is back on the mat, fingers gingerly touching his split lip. “Ow.”

“Up.”

He gets up.

“Again.”

The cycle repeats. They’re actually fairly matched in terms of skill, but his endurance is so shot to hell that it barely matters. She puts him on the mat five more times before he finally holds up his hand. “Done,” he says in Russian. “I’m done.”

“Up,” she commands.

“Done.”

“Get up.”

He hauls himself back up to his feet, wincing as his tired muscles shake underneath him. He’s exhausted, despite none of their fights lasting longer than a few minutes. “I can’t,” he says, trying to find his balance.

Elizaveta eyes his shaky stance and says something too low and fast for him to catch. “Sit down,” she tells him in English, pointing at the mat. “Do not move.”

He sits. Collapses, more like, and watches from the floor as she climbs out of the ropes and walks over to the door.

Then she steps out.

And he’s alone.

Clint sits up, staring at the open door, then around at the empty gym. There’s another door on the wall opposite, right under the symbol. It’s also slightly ajar.

_Run,_ he hears Tony whisper in his mind. _They’re not looking, Hawkeye. Go. Get out of here._

He starts to. Exhaustion forgotten, he gets to his feet and takes a couple steps to the wall. Towards freedom.

Then he stops.

_What if you don’t make it?_

“I might,” he says aloud, the words sounding small and pathetic in the empty room.

_And what will he do to you if you don’t?_

Clint feels sick. He wants to run. Cap would run. Tony would run. They would never stay and let someone beat them down like this.

_You’re not Captain America. You’re not Tony Stark. You’re just Clint Barton. What good are you?  
_

“I…” he says softly, but he doesn’t finish. There’s a creak behind him and he spins, hitting the mat as Elizaveta steps back through the door. She raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t say anything as she walks back over and hands him something in a canteen. Water.

“Drink,” she says. “You are weak.”

_I’ve been shot at a lot recently,_ he thinks, but he chugs the water anyway. “ _Spasibo_ ,” he says between gulps, reminding himself to slow down and breathe.

“ _Da_.” She looks away from him, seemingly disinterested. 

The water lends him a little burst of energy that allows him to keep his feet for another couple of rounds. On the last one, Clint tries a desperate move that involves him awkwardly turning while they’re grappling. He comes out of it with a painfully twisted wrist, but Elizaveta ends up on the mat, winded from his shoulder slamming into her diaphragm. He lands half on top of her, out of breath himself, but very pleased. 

“Barton,” she says, pushing at him, and he realizes his head is on her chest. Blushing, he rolls off and onto the mat next to her. She’s smiling, though, so he probably isn’t in trouble. 

“Sorry,” he says, looking up at the ceiling. 

“No matter.” She gets up, then pulls him to his feet. “You have potential,” she tells him in English. He shrugs and takes another drink of his canteen. “ _Sledovat.”_

He follows her out of the ropes and over to the free weights, where she quickly sketches out a couple of exercises for him to do. Then onto the treadmill, which looks a lot sleeker than he would have thought for the time period. She makes him run for about ten minutes, then takes pity on him and allows him to stop after he nearly falls off. 

“We will continue working together,” she says, watching him carefully as his wobbly legs almost buckle beneath him. “You require some improvement.”

Clint sighs and puts a hand on the wall, regaining his balance. As much as he doesn’t really want to be beat up by her every day, this will probably be good for him. Some training will help him build back lost muscle, and the quicker he gets to his old levels, the better his chances for escape. 

_Unless he breaks you first._

“Shut up,” he hisses, and then he turns to face Elizaveta. “ _Gde Mikhail_?”

“He is busy with another assignment,” she says, crossing her arms. “I am to work with you until he returns.”

She doesn’t look irritated by this, at least, and Clint feels a small flare of hope. If he cooperates with her—gets to know her—she might be willing to help him. She’s more friendly than most of the people he’s met here.

“It is time to shower,” Elizaveta tells him. “We are finished for today. We’ll start again tomorrow.”

Clint follows her out the door and to the shower room the Soldier took him to all those weeks ago. She directs him to one of the stalls before standing back in a parade-rest position. “ _Razdevat_. Undress. New clothes will be brought.”

He happily peels off his sweat-soaked shirt and tosses it onto the bench, then hesitates as he reaches for his pants. Elizaveta raises an eyebrow. “ _Prodolzhit.”_

Clint sighs, but strips off the pants as well and tosses them onto the shirt. The shower takes some time to warm up, but the coolness feels nice against his heated skin. He turns his back on her and grabs the little bar of soap from the wooden corner shelf, rubbing it into his hair before sticking his whole head under the spray. 

There’s some rustling behind him, and then the shower next to him turns on. Clint looks over to see a very naked Elizaveta stepping underneath the water. He immediately snaps his head straight forward. “Uh…”

“Calm yourself,” she says, rolling her eyes, grabbing her own soap . “Wash.”

He washes. Then he stands under the slowly warming spray, eyes closed, enjoying the brief peace as the water soothes his muscles. It’s calm under here, with just the pounding of water in his ears. 

“Barton,” Elizaveta says, her voice muffled.

Clint opens his eyes and turns his head automatically, just in time to catch her rubbing the bar of soap on her chest. “Shit. Sorry,” he says, feeling himself flush as he looks away. _Get a grip on yourself, Barton. You’re not a fucking teenager._

Elizaveta laughs. “Go change.” She indicates the benches across the locker room. There’s two piles of clothes and two rough towels. 

Clint nods and leaves the warm comfort of the shower for the cold air. He quickly dries off, then pulls on the institutional grey clothing in record time. Elizaveta is still in the shower, and unsure what else to do, he sits on the bench and keeps his eyes on the floor. 

Her water shuts off and he hears her wet footsteps tread lightly over to him. He doesn’t look up. “Do I frighten you?” she asks, amusement in her voice. “Are you afraid of a naked woman?”

“I’m married,” Clint says.

“You Americans are so prudish,” she says. “Sex is nothing to be ashamed of.”

Clint just shrugs. 

“Do you prefer men?” Elizaveta asks. “Are you _guluboi?_ ”

“No.” He’s slept with men before, but he generally does prefer women. “I’m just not interested in cheating, alright? I love my wife.”

“Your wife is dead,” Elizaveta says, and Clint has a moment of panic before remembering that Mikhail thinks he was married to Natasha. He must have passed that on to her. “So you have nothing to worry about.” She looks down at his waist. "You cannot tell me me that you are not interested."

He's not really hard, but he's definitely not soft either, and he takes a second to curse his own body before shaking his head. "No."  


“It would be enjoyable,” she says, putting a finger under his chin to make him look up. “I am good at many things.”

Clint tries and fails not to look at her breasts. They’re right in front of him, still glistening with water, round and soft and—

“No.” He stands up and moves away from her. “I don’t want to. Please.”

Elizaveta scowls at him. “English is not allowed,” she says, and points at the bench. “Sit down.”

He sits on the very edge. She takes her own towel and dries off, then dresses without ceremony. When she’s done, she grabs his arm and pulls him out of the shower room, down a couple hallways, and shoves him back into his own little cell. Clint can’t help the feeling of relief that washes over him.

Still, he can’t help but wonder if he’s made a mistake. Maybe he should have—

“Food will be brought,” Elizaveta says, her voice cold. “We will train again tomorrow.”

She leaves. The door slams behind her and locks shut. 

Clint collapses onto his bed, barely mustering the energy to roll over onto his back. “I think I fucked up,” he says to the empty room. 

“Yeah,” Nat agrees, sitting next to him. “Probably.”

“I don’t want to sleep with her.”

“It’s just a job, Clint.”

“Doesn’t feel like a job.” He looks at her. She has short hair today, straight and red, and lipstick to match. “It feels like betraying Laura.”

“It’s survival,” she says a little more softly. “Don’t feel bad about surviving.”

He snorts a little at that. “Have you _met_ me?”

Nat gives him a sad smile. “Clint.”

“I know.” He looks at his hands. “I love her, Nat.”

“So get back to her,” Nat says. “However you have to.” She puts a hand on his arm. “Compartmentalize, Clint. This isn’t personal. It’s just the job.”

She’s right, of course. She always is. Clint takes a deep breath. “I’m going to need so much therapy if I get out of here.”

She frowns. “When.”

“When what?”

“ _When_ you get out of here.”

Clint blinks. “Huh?”

“You keep saying if.” Nat puts a hand on his arm. “ _If_ you get out. _If_ you kill him.” She leans in, her lips brushing his ear. “Stay strong, Clint. You’ll get out of here.”

She disappears the same way she always does, fading into oblivion between one breath and the next. When only the faint press of her hand on his skin remains, Clint turns onto his side and stares at the wall. 

“Yeah,” he says to the empty room. “I’ll get out.”

The words echo into the stillness, sounding emptier and more hollow than ever before. 


	30. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This will be worse than the others,” Mikhail says, his quiet words laced with danger.
> 
> “I know.” Clint drops his gaze, unable to stare into those piercing eyes any longer.
> 
> “Good,” Mikhail says. “So long as we understand each other.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's this, an update so soon? It's a Thanksgiving miracle! Enjoy it, because things are about to get dark...

Mikhail watches Clint from the shadows of the training room. His little bird is coming along quite nicely. Clint’s hand to hand is not as good as his shooting, but there is noticeable improvement. It’s only been few weeks of training, but already he’s managing to get the better of Elizaveta every few rounds. Mikhail smiles as Clint performs a complicated maneuver that ends up with the other agent facedown on the floor, her arm wrenched behind her and Clint’s fingers at her throat. “Dead,” he says, and she snarls something that Mikhail can’t hear. 

Clint lets her up and they exchange a quick volley of words. His Russian is coming along nicely, Mikhail notes. The accent is atrocious, but the pronunciation is clear and the words come easily.

“That was impressive,” a quiet voice next to him notes. Mikhail turns slightly to see a young man standing next to him. One of the science team members. Mikhail doesn’t remember his name. “He is good.”

“He is _very_ good,” Mikhail notes, pride coloring his voice. 

“Here are the test results you requested,” the scientist says, handing Mikhail a small stack of papers. 

Mikhail takes them and flips through quickly. “So the serum _is_ staying in his blood?”

“Yes. His cells are regenerating at a high rate, and it appears there are other side effects as well. His senses are heightened. His reflexes are quicker. I suspect that it is affecting his cognition as well. I can do further testing if you are interested."  


“Excellent.” Mikhail hands him back the papers. “I am. And you are still putting it in his food?”

“Yes.” 

“Good. Continue doing that.”

He nods. “We will need to increase his calorie intake to compensate for the regenerative aspects. I would recommend—”

Interruption comes in the form of Lukas, who is wearing a thunderous expression and gripping his own sheaf of papers in a folder. The Soldier trails at his heels. “I need to speak with you,” he says, grabbing Mikhail by the arm. “Immediately.”

Mikhail waves an apologetic hand at the scientists, who turns to continue watching Clint. Then he follows Lukas into the hallway. “Is there a problem?”

“I have a report from Agent Matvey.” 

Alarm grips him. Matvey is one of Mikhail’s team, and one of his oldest friends as well. They haven’t spoken in seven years, not since he was stationed in America to spy on SHIELD. “Is he alright?”

“He is fine. But you will not like what he found.” He hands Mikhail the folder.

Mikhail skims through it. The alarm slowly trickles away, replaced by confusion. “Is this…”

“Yes. I had him check again. It is true.” Lukas crosses his arms. “Your little bird has been lying to you.”

“But…” Mikhail reads through a second time, and then a third. “I do not understand.”

“He has been lying to you,” Lukas repeats. “Since the beginning, it would appear.”

Mikhail has to consciously relax his grip on the paper. “So it would seem.” The pride he felt moments ago is gone. He feels…betrayed. Hurt. Anger swells in him, a furious white-hot rush that nearly steals his breath away.

_Honesty. Respect. Obedience._

Lessons he thought Clint had learned. Apparently, he had been wrong.

He reads through the papers once more, attempting to wrap his mind fully around the situation. Then he looks up at Lukas. “Excuse me, please,” he says, his calm voice a strange juxtaposition to the fury roiling in his chest.

“What will you do?” Lukas asks.

Mikhail takes a deep breath. “I intend to ask him for the truth.”

“And if he lies?”

“Then I will punish him.” 

Lukas pulls his cane from his belt, turning it between his fingers. “Good,” he says. “Then let us go.”

***

Clint drops to the mat for the third time in as many minutes, winded from Elizaveta’s kick into his stomach. Stupid, leaving an opening that obvious. He should have known better than that. He _does_ know better than that. He needs to quit taking risks to beat her. 

Elizaveta helps him up. “Stupid,” she says, and Clint scowls. “Look.” She puts her hands on her hips and turns him sideways, kicking at his feet until they’re placed properly. “Stand like this. I come from the side, and you…” she pokes at his right arm, and he raises it to deflect her slow-motion kick. “Understand?”

“Yes,” he says.

“Good. Again.”

Clint gets into position and readies himself. She repeats the move, and this time he’s able to turn and shove her foot to the side. “Good,” she says, offering a rare smile. “Much better.”

“Can we try the other move again? The…” he struggles for the right Russian word, but she gets it, moving back across the mat.

“Drink first,” she tells him, pointing towards the canteens in the corner. “Then yes, we can try again.”

The closer door opens, and Clint glances up to see Mikhail and Lukas walk in, accompanied by the Soldier. Clint stands up straight, holding up a hand to Elizaveta. “Wait.”

Mikhail and Lukas walk right up to the fighting ring. Clint stands at attention, unsure what else to do. His skin is prickling. Mikhail especially looks more serious than Clint has ever seen him.

“Agent Barton,” Mikhail says, stopping a few feet away. “Come down here.”

Clint can almost feel the blood drain from his face at the sound of those words. He climbs through the ropes and stands in front of Mikhail. “Yes, sir?”

“We have a question, Agent. And we need you to answer it honestly.”

Anxiety twists hard in his gut. “Yes, sir.”

“We have been through the records,” Mikhail says. “SHIELD’s records, I mean. It has taken some time, but we have found something interesting.”

_Oh, fuck._

“There is no mention of a Clint Barton,” Lukas says, idly twisting his cane between his fingers. “Not a single one. It is almost as if you don’t exist.”

“I’m undercover,” Clint says immediately, switching back to English. He doesn’t have the vocabulary for this one. “Standard practice. They’ll disavow me until I come back.”

“But no one is looking for you either,” Mikhail says. “Other than the two we found in Russia, there is no talk of getting a team together at all.”

“It’d be a shit secret organization if they made waves about rescue operations.”

“It would be. But there is no rescue operation,” Lukas says. “Because according to SHIELD’s extensive records, you do not exist at all.”

“I told you, they—”

“But there is more,” Lukas continues, talking over him. “You are not only not in SHIELD’s records. You are not in any records at all. There is not a single mention of a Clinton Francis Barton anywhere within the United States government. Not a birth certificate, not a hospital announcement, not even a school graduation photo. _Nothing_.”

“Which means you have been lying to me since the beginning,” Mikhail says, and the cold fury in his voice terrifies Clint to the bone. “And you are aware of what that means.”

“I…” Clint starts, and then he lets it trail off. What’s the point?

“I will give you one chance,” Mikhail says, stepping forward. “Tell me the truth about who you are, and I will be lenient with you. Lie again and you will regret it.”

Clint takes a deep breath. “I’m not lying,” he says. “That’s my name. That’s who I am. That’s true.”

“Then why do you not exist?” Lukas asks. His smile is knife-sharp and colder than ice.

“I can’t tell you that,” Clint says. He feels the water bottle slip from his numb fingers and spill across his bare feet.

“Can’t?” Mikhail asks. “Or won’t?”

“Can’t.”

Mikhail steps closer. Clint stands his ground, despite the overwhelming urge to run and hide. He forces himself to look up into Mikhail’s eyes, holding his gaze until they’re separated by mere inches. “You do understand,” he says calmly, “what will happen to you.”

“I know,” Clint whispers, and he has to clench his fists to keep the fear from escaping in a scream.

“This will be worse than the others,” Mikhail says, his quiet words laced with danger.

“I know.” Clint drops his gaze, unable to stare into those piercing eyes any longer.

“Good,” Mikhail says. “So long as we understand each other.” He steps back and turns to the Soldier. “Take him back to his room. Restrain him.”

The Soldier obeys wordlessly, grabbing Clint by the arm and pulling him out of the gym. Clint doesn’t bother resisting. He lets the Solider walk him down the halls, then shove him into his cell. “Sit on the bed.”

Clint sits. The Soldier handcuffs his wrists to the bed rail. “You should tell them,” he says as the lock clicks shut. “Whatever they want to know.”

“If I tell them,” Clint says, “then the entire world is in danger.” _And the future, too._

“They will break you.”

“Let them try.” He tries for bravado and probably comes up short. “Got any advice?”

“They will likely use the Cube,” the Soldier says. His voice is full of pain and anger. “Don’t fight. Fighting makes it worse.”

He steps out and closes the door, leaving Clint to stare after him in open-mouthed horror.

_What the hell is the Cube?_


	31. Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fear is an old, old friend to Clint. He’s lived in its embrace long enough to know the familiar touch when it trickles through his veins. He knows how to meditate through it. How to control it. How to turn it into something effective that allows him to complete his mission. But when he sees what The Cube is, all thoughts of control and reason go out of his head.

They let him sit for a long time. Clint is used to playing the waiting game—any agent worth their salt knows this technique—but this time, he’s having difficulty keeping his anxiety under control. He keeps picturing Mikhail’s face. The anger in his stance. The betrayal in his voice. 

_This will be worse than the others._

“I don’t really see how it can get worse,” he says. 

“And where have _you_ been for the last few months?” Nat snorts. She’s dressed in her SHIELD mission gear, ready to kick some ass. Hopefully not his. “It’s definitely not going to get better.”

“Well, no,” Clint says, “not with something as ominous as _The Cube_.” He aims for a flippant tone, but it falls flat. 

“This is more important than the other things,” Nat says, checking the chamber on her favorite sidearm. “You can’t let them win this time.”

“I never _let_ them win,” Clint snarls at her. “But I’m not exactly holding all the cards here either.”

She shrugs. “Then you have to get out.”

“Oh, thanks, Nat. You’re _so_ helpful. Remind me why I keep you around again?”

“Because pretending I’m still here is easier than dealing with your past traumas?” She shoves her gun in its holster. “They’re coming, by the way.”

Clint looks up in time to see the door open. Nat steps into the corner as Mikhail and several soldiers walk in. “Look—”

“I do not want to hear a word out of you,” Mikhail says icily. “This is your only warning.” He barks orders to the guards, who quickly free Clint and pull him up to his feet. They leave the handcuffs on the bed and push him out the door and down the hallway. Mikhail grips his left bicep and practically drags Clint next to him. 

He has an inexplicable urge to apologize, but as soon as his mouth opens, Mikhail shoots him such a cold glare that Clint just closes it again. He’s not going to be able to weasel his way out of this one. Not with words. He’ll just have to take his licks and get it over with, then try and convince Mikhail of his contriteness later. 

He spends the long walk trying to center himself. He’s sure whatever is coming is going to be bad, and he needs to get an iron grip on himself before it happens. _You can do this. You’ve survived this far. Just a little longer._

Clint is still telling himself this when they stop before a closed door. He repeats it as Mikhail keys in a code, as the ominous sounds of several locks unlatching booms through the corridors. 

Then the door swings open, and he sees it.

Fear is an old, old friend to Clint. He’s lived in its embrace long enough to know the familiar touch when it trickles through his veins. He knows how to meditate through it. How to control it. How to turn it into something effective that allows him to complete his mission. But when he sees what The Cube is, all thoughts of control and reason go out of his head.

It’s the Tesseract. The Cube is the fucking Tesseract. The fucking Tesseract which is _supposed_ to be in Camp Leheigh, safely under the control of SHIELD. The fucking Tesseract which shouldn’t be anywhere _near_ HYDRA hands. Panic grips him, pure and simple and _terrifying,_ and everything in his body screams at him to _RUN RUN RUN_.

He shoves at the guards holding him, the panic lending him extra strength, and they go off balance long enough for him to pull himself free and get back through the door. Their shouts echo after him as he sprints down the hallway. There’s no room in his mind to make a plan. No thought of anything except to get as far away from that fucking _thing_ as he can.

He doesn’t bother trying any of the doors—none of them are going to open anyway. He instead just runs, half-convinced that if he puts enough distance between him and that _thing,_ he’ll be okay. 

_Where are you running to, little Hawk?_

“Get out of my head, Loki!” Clint growls, practically bouncing off a wall before booking around another corner. He turns a few more before spotting a room at the end of a hallway with a slightly open door. Great. Somewhere to hide. He bursts in and slams the door shut behind him, then collapses to one knee while he wheezes in air. Christ, he’s in dangerous shape. He’s got to get out of sight more securely, because this running and sprinting crap isn’t going to do it.

He’s in some kind of conference room. There’s an outrageously large rendering of the HYDRA logo on the opposite wall, and a long, polished table ringed with chairs. A chalkboard hangs across from two windows, and a HYDRA flag graces the wall between them.

Clint staggers up and looks outside into the steady rain that’s falling. He can’t make out much, but there’s a set of double fences about five hundred yards away; the tops of both are level with his window—probably about twenty feet. Not the worst height he’s ever jumped from, but definitely a good way to end up with injuries. “Last resort,” he mutters, and examines the room for anything else to use.

Footsteps thunder in the hallway and he drops immediately, pressing to the side of the wall next to the door. They don’t stop, thank God for small miracles. Clint stays crouched for a minute after, holding his breath and waiting.

“Best option,” a voice says, and he jumps a little to see Nat materialized next to him. “Throw a chair through the window. Jump.”

“Twenty feet?”

“You’ve done worse.”

“In better shape. With gear, usually.” He’d kill for his bow with the grappling hook right about now.

She points at the flag. “Tie that to the table and rappel down?”

Clint grins. “ _That’s_ why I’ve kept you around.”

“Or because you’re not willing to face your past trauma,” she says, but she smiles at him anyway. Clint stays low and moves across the room. The flag isn’t huge, but it’ll help cut the distance down., and it handily comes with an attached rope. Clint loops it around the nearest table leg with a quick knot, then examines the windowsill for latches. No point in announcing his presence if he doesn’t have to.

“Head for the fence when you’re out,” Nat says. “It’s just chain link. There isn’t even barbed wire at the top.”

“Electrified,” Clint says, pointing at a box. “And there’s two of them, look. I’ll have to climb twice.”

Natasha points at the people standing by the base. “Under repair.”

He shrugs. “We’ll see. Rather have a vehicle.” There’s no latch on the window, or at least not one that he can open. “I’m gonna have to break it.”

“Do it quick.” She nods at the door. “They’re coming back.”

Clint takes a deep breath and grabs the back of a chair, giving it an experimental heft. It’s a sturdy construction. Should do the job nicely. “Move,” he says to Nat.

She backs up. He picks up the chair and in a single move, turns in a circle and hurls it at the window. The motion strains his back and his arms, but he nails the release. The chair hits the window and it shatters in a spectacular spray of glass.

No time to lose. He grabs the flag from the floor, puts his foot on the windowsill, and turns to rappel down the bricks. The flag only cuts the jump in half, but half is enough. Clint falls the rest of the way easily. He rolls as he hits the ground and lets the momentum take him to his feet. Then he’s running again. His breaths come in heaving, sharp gasps, and he stumbles a couple times, but he keeps pushing forward. _Fence. Get to the fence._ It’s only a few hundred yards away. He can make it.

His path is blocked by several HYDRA soldiers in work coveralls. Clint is tired and cold from the rain, but his training with Elizaveta has honed his hand-to-hand skills considerably. It takes him barely more than a minute to dispatch all three of them. Unfortunately, it’s a minute he doesn’t have to lose. He reaches the base of the first fence just as the doors of the compound burst open and a stream of soldiers come flying out. Searchlights begin to illuminate the area, making wide sweeps of the soaked ground.

Clint curses and starts climbing, gripping the wet metal as best as he can with his numbing fingers. The rain pelts him every time he looks up, and he has to blink the water out of his eyes to properly see. It’s a slower climb than he’d like, but he finally makes it to the top and prepares to swing a leg over to drop to the in-between.

A flash of light makes him shout and he throws a hand over his face, nearly losing his grip on the chains entirely. At the same time, a buzzing noise permeates the air around him, and he feels the hair on his arms stand up.

“Agent Barton!”

Clint pauses and looks back down to the ground. Mikhail is standing there, his hand on a radio and a half-proud/half-irritated expression on his face. “And just where do you think you are going?”

Clint looks back at the second fence, which is now dangerously sparking. _Shit. They turned it on._ If he jumps onto that one, he’ll be Clint Motherfucking Barton, barbecued sniper. But if he drops down into the middle part, he’s going to be trapped between the two fences. Like a rat in a maze. Easy to hunt down. _Fuck._ “Uh...out?”

“I will make this easy for you,” Mikhail shouts over the rain. “Come down, and we can have a rational discussion like grown men. Make any further move upwards, and I will shoot you in the knees and cripple you for life.”

Clint clings to the fence, frozen in indecision. He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t have anywhere to go. He’s absolutely, 100%, completely and totally fucked. Hot tears spring to his eyes and he furiously blinks them away, wiping his face under the guise of clearing rain from it. Goddamn it. _Goddamn_ it. He was _so_ _fucking_ _close_.

“Agent Barton,” Mikhail says, and Clint bows his head under the weight of those words. “I grow weary.”

_Can’t go forward. Can’t stay here._

Well. That only leaves him with the worst choice, doesn’t it?

“Okay,” Clint says, softly at first. Then he raises his voice to be heard over the rain. “Okay! I’m coming down. Don’t shoot.”

He climbs slowly, both out of fear of falling and fear of what’s coming. Once his feet touch the ground, he takes a deep breath to calm himself, then forces his hands to let go of the fence. As soon as he does, half a dozen HYDRA jackasses swarm him, forcing him on the ground and into a set of cold handcuffs that are way too tight.

Mikhail kneels by him, heedless of the mud as he runs a hand through Clint’s wet hair. “That was quite a reaction,” he says, grasping painfully as he turns Clint’s head to meet his eyes. “What caused it, I wonder?” When there’s no response, he sighs. “No matter. We will find out.” He turns to the guards. “Take him back inside. Keep him secured until he is in the chair. If he runs again, I will hold each one of you responsible and the proper consequences will be applied. Am I understood?”

They salute and drag Clint back inside the building, roughly pulling him as he stumbles a few times. “Easy on the merchandise,” he wheezes as one of them “accidentally” pushes him into the wall. That gets him a smack on the head and a sharp phrase that he translates to probably mean _shut the fuck up._

The walk back to the room is not as long as he would like. He struggles a little bit when they go to actually put him in the chair—automatic instincts taking over—but they subdue him quickly. Clint gives up when they get his arms secured. Straps are pulled over his legs, his chest, and even his neck, tight enough that he can barely turn his head without it digging into his windpipe. A little halo with electrodes is wrapped around his head. The wires tickle his ears and drape annoyingly in front of his eyes, unmoving even when he shakes his head. 

They leave, then, and he’s left alone to stare at the Tesseract. Left alone with his increasing terror. Left alone with the memories of everything he did under its control. It’s seated across from him in something that looks vaguely like Tony’s arc reactor. He can see the hints of cables and wires coming from it. Some go his chair, some to across the room and over to something he can’t see, but the rest of them lead up into a white circular disc. He doesn’t know what it’s for, but odds are it can’t be any good.

“Oh, Hawkeye,” says a smooth voice, and Clint doesn’t have to look to know that it’s Loki. “I told you you’d be back under my power soon enough. I knew deep down that you wanted it.” He steps into Clint’s field of vision and smiles like a snake. “You miss my touch, don’t you? You miss how I good I could make you feel.”

“I don’t miss hearing you talk,” Clint snaps, flinching away from the cold fingers on his arm. “Stop touching me!”

“You asked me to touch you. You knelt at my feet and begged for the honor of my hand on your skin.”

“You _made_ me do that! I didn’t want it!”

Loki laughs. “But that makes it so much sweeter now, doesn’t it?”

The door to the cell opens and the god sighs, withdrawing his touch. He doesn’t vanish, though. Just moves over into the corner and grins knowingly at Clint as Mikhail steps into the room.

“Agent Barton,” he says calmly.

“Sir,” Clint says back. He’s shivering, although he’s not sure if it’s from the cold or from fear. “I don’t suppose you’ve had a sudden change of heart?”

Mikhail smiles faintly. “No.” He checks the bindings around Clint, his fingers surprisingly gentle. “Turn it on,” he says to someone Clint can’t see, and the machine across from him slowly whirs to life. The Tesseract starts to glow more brightly, and the air around them seems to become charged with electricity. It sends out a pulse, a weak little wave of blue. Then another one. Stronger. Just like it did the last time—

_A crackling noise a bright flash of light and then there’s a man standing where the opening into space was and he’s shaking and covered in sweat but his eyes oh god his eyes are so cruel_

His composure breaks. “Don’t do this,” Clint begs, twisting his hand to grab at Mikhail’s sleeve. “Please don’t, please, oh god. I’ll tell you everything, I swear. Don’t do this, please!”

“You will tell me everything?” Milhail asks with a raised eyebrow. “Truly?”

“I—“ Clint bites off the rest. It’s not fucking fair, it’s not. He can’t say anything, he can’t just give it up like that, but if he doesn’t they’re going to control his mind and make him do it anyway and that’s just so much worse. “Please,” he says again, because it’s all that he has. “You don’t know what you’re playing with. It’s dangerous!”

“You are familiar with The Cube?” Mikhail asks, surprise in his voice.

“It’s called the Tesseract,” Clint says, aware he’s giving too much away. But he has to make them understand. “It’s insanely dangerous and not a single person on this planet knows how to contain it. You are screwing with power that you can’t handle, trust me.”

“How do you know so much about it?”

“I’ve seen it before. Years ago. It almost destroyed New York City.” Clint cuts himself off hard. _Too much. You’re giving them too much._

“We did not hear of that,” Mikhail muses. “When was this?”

“You have to stop,” Clint says. His hand scrabbles for Mikhail’s shirt, winding into the fabric. “Please. Mikhail. You have to put it back.”

“Tell me why it frightens you so much,” Mikhail says. “What have you experienced?”

Fear. Anger. Raging against a cage in his mind that’s made of blue smoke and green eyes and a mocking laughter. _Agent Barton. Such an interesting mind you have. I will delight in exploring it further._

He doesn’t realize that he’s trying to hit his head against the headrest until Mikhail puts a hand on his forehead. “You have to stop it,” he says again. “Controlling minds—it’s not—it hurts, please don’t do it, please, I can’t do it again.”

“Controlling minds?” Mikhail asks. “What do you mean?”

“I...” Clint trails off, unsure what to say. “The Tesseract. The Cube. What do you use it for?”

“It allows us to access your memories,” Mikhail says. “And the machine displays them.” He points at the white circle. “It is rudimentary thus far, but we have had limited success.”

_Access my memories?_

“I don’t—” Clint starts, but he’s cut off by a blinding flash of pain in his head. The scream erupts from his throat without permission and he strains hard against the bindings as he’s transported back to his fight with Loki _who the fuck is this guy no don’t touch me with that_ _thing what the fuck_

He forces his eyes open in time to see Loki’s hazy face on the screen, distorted and warped and _blue_ somehow, but still definitely Loki. It’s the moment right before Loki controlled him, when Clint missed a vital move and the staff touched his chest. It’s right there in front of him, not in his head, not a hallucination. Right fucking there. On a screen. Not safe, not secure. Not protected. 

Clint’s stomach twists and he dry-heaves a little bit, the pieces of the story coming together. “What…the fuck…was that?”

“Your memory,” Mikhail says. He sounds very pleased. “Disjointed and fragmented. It will take some time to map your neural patterns.” He leans down close to Clint, meeting his gaze. “Are you sure you do not just wish to tell me what I know?”

A tear slips down Clint’s face and he winces. “I can’t,” he says softly. “Mikhail. Please. Please don’t do this.”

“So be it,” Mikhail says, resignation in his voice. “Again.”

“No—don’t!”

The lightning flashes.

His mind _burns_.

And Clint screams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so long! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone!


	32. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Then show us what we want to see,” Mikhail says. “You are hiding secrets, Agent Barton. If you show us the truth, then we will leave your other memories alone.” He leans closer, dropping his voice low. “Stop _fighting_ me,” he says, but that’s like telling the sun to stop shining, and he can’t do it, he just can’t. He is Clint Motherfucking Barton and he’s not gonna give into this like a little bitch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Implied rape in this chapter. Nothing graphic mentioned.

They finally give him a break when he throws up for the third time. He doesn’t really have anything _left_ in him to throw up, but the horrible nauseating mix of memories and pain churn his stomach enough to make him dry heave in a spectacular fashion. Mikhail remembers to step back this round. “A short break,” he says, loud enough to be heard over Clint’s gagging. “Then we can try again.”

Clint sags in relief against the chair and lets his eyes slip closed, ignoring the blurry image of his brother on the screen. He knows he needs to regroup, to figure out if he let anything important slip, but he just…can’t. Not right now.

“You can make this stop,” Mikhail murmurs, kneeling in front of him, snapping his fingers until Clint looks at him. “You know how.”

“No way,” Clint breathes, trying to sound tough and failing. “I’m…enjoying the…reruns.” He vaguely gestures towards the screen with his fingers. “Think you can…find my first…girlfriend? She was fucking… _gorgeous_. Love to see her in…action again.”

“I admire your spirit,” Mikhail says. “But as always, it is foolish. You continue to act the child.”

“I am a child. I’m just good…at faking it.”

“You told me you were not a child.”

“Yeah, well.” Clint spits to the side, then half-regrets not spitting on Mikhail’s shoes. “I’m…also a liar.”

“ _That_ I know.” Mikhail sighs and leaves him there, going to converse quietly with a tech that Clint can’t see.

Clint eyes his bleeding wrists, then looks up at the blue glowing Cube. On the plus side, it’s not the Tesseract he’s looking at, as he’d assumed in his initial panic. Somewhere in all the flickering memories he’d seen a half-remembered conversation with Thor explaining the various stones to him. The Tesseract was the space stone. It made portals. The mind stone was what Loki had, and then what Vision had later. Clint isn’t sure if HYDRA having the mind stone is better than them having the space stone, but at least he knows a giant alien army isn’t going to come tearing through a rift in space at any second. He doesn’t know why it’s blue and not yellow, but honestly he doesn’t really give a shit right now. He has more important things to worry about.

_What exactly did they see?_

He’s really not sure of that either. Neural mapping, Mikhail had called it. Trying to figure out which configuration of buttons lead to corresponding areas of memory. He has no idea if they saw anything important, or if it was all just unclear flashes. He’s not sure how the machine works, or how they even set the goddamn thing up. How can they _display_ his memories?

Tony would know. Tony would be able to figure it out. Tony would sit through thirty seconds of this and learn how it works, and then disable it with extreme prejudice before flying away.

 _Tony is dead_ , Clint reminds himself, and he chokes a little on the memory. He’d never been as close with him as he was with Nat, but they’d been friends nonetheless. And Tony, for all his faults, had given Clint back his family. He owes the man for that. Even in death.

Mikhail re-enters his field of vision. “Agent Barton.”

“Uh-huh,” Clint manages, still feeling nauseated. He spits again. “Can I help you?”

“How are you feeling?”

Clint feels like death, but he manages to scrape together a _you have got to be SHITTING me_ expression on his face, enough so that Mikhail just nods. “Would you like some water?”

“Yeah.” He coughs, then adds, “Sir.”

Mikhail offers him a glass, helping him sip. Clint is reminded of their first encounter, so many weeks ago.

_This is going to be a long game, my friend. And you are going to want to set your pace accordingly._

“Fucking long-ass game,” he mutters, taking a breath in between sips.

“Hmm?”

“Nothing.” Clint turns his head away from the glass. “So when did you build all this?”

Mikhail hands the water to someone else. “The technicians finished the build a mere week or two ago.”

 _Explains why they didn’t lead with it._ “How does it work?”

“I would be foolish to tell you that,” Mikhail murmurs, smiling faintly. “Suffice to say that it works, although not without risk.” He leans forward. “We tested it, of course, but we are unsure of the long-term effects.”

“Oh. Great.” Clint shifts in the chair. “So you don’t know if it’s gonna melt my brain or what, then?”

Mikhail shrugs. “It is unlikely, but there is possibility of long-term damage.” He locks eyes with Clint. “It would be better to just tell me what I want to know.”

“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Clint grins at him. The effect is probably lessened with his cracked and bloody lips.

Mikhail just nods, ever stoic, although he definitely doesn’t get the joke. “I understand.” He adjusts the electrodes on Clint’s head, then gently brushes the wires aside so they don’t block his view. “We are ready,” he calls to the techs, and Clint stiffens under his fingers.

The chair hums underneath him, and there is a flash of light and _pain_ —

_“Boy! Where are you hiding?”_

_“Come on, Nat, you know I don’t do blind dates.”_

_“What did it show you, Agent Barton?”_

_“I can feel the difference.”_

_“Nice shot, little Hawkeye. We’ll make an archer out of you yet.”_

“Stop!” Mikhail says suddenly. “Go back.”

“That’s an option?” Clint gasps, and winces as the pain stabs him again. The memories flash by, but slow enough that he can keep his eyes open. He watches them play on the screen like a movie—2012. New York. The actual Tesseract.

“I can’t find the exact memory, sir,” the tech says. “But here’s something related to it…”

Clint grits his teeth as Loki’s smug face appears on the screen. _“Ah, Agent Barton. Are you ready for your mission?”_

_“Yes, sir.”_

_“Good. But first, there is something I would like you to do.” Loki smiles cruelly. “Kneel for me, Agent.”_

_Clint drops to his knees instantly. Inside, he screams._

_Outside, he smiles. Puts his hand on Loki’s thigh. “Yes, sir. Anything.”_

The pain lessens and Clint gasps in a breath _. “Don’t,”_ he says sharply, looking up at Mikhail. “I don’t want to see it.”

“See what?”

“No,” says the real-life fake Loki, who is casually leaning against the wall at the edge of Clint’s vision. “I don’t imagine you view that period of your life with fondness.”

Clint ignores him. “That. Him. Please.”

“Then show us what _we_ want to see,” Mikhail says. “You are hiding secrets, Agent Barton. If you show us the truth, then we will leave your other memories alone.” He leans closer, dropping his voice low. “Stop _fighting_ me,” he says, but that’s like telling the sun to stop shining, and he can’t do it, he just can’t. He is Clint Motherfucking Barton and he’s not gonna give into this like a little bitch.

“Fucking make me,” he growls back.

Mikhail’s expression tightens. “So be it.” He steps back. “Again, then.”

***

They stop after an eternity. Clint doesn’t even have the strength to acknowledge it. Guards unstrap him from the chair and drag his limp body through the complex until they reach his cell, where they drop him in an undignified heap. Clint sleeps where they leave him, passing out before he even really hits the floor. His dreams are flickering and uneasy and he wakes up in a cold sweat, flipping over in a panicked and painful roll until he’s on his back.

Mikhail is sitting in a chair by the door, idly flipping through a book. “You’re awake,” he comments. “Good.”

“Yeah,” Clint mutters, staring at the ceiling. “Good.”

It doesn’t feel good. It feels like he wants to die. His head is pounding. His wrists are throbbing and raw underneath the handcuffs. He can’t quite take a deep breath, and his mouth tastes like blood.

“The techs assure me there is no long-term damage, although you will feel some unpleasant side effects.”

Clint supposes “unpleasant side effects” is the stoic Russian phrase for _feeling like you’ve been hit by a train_. He’s had some nasty scrapes in his life, but this definitely takes the cake. It’s more than a headache. This is like he pried Loki out of his brain, got absolutely hammered, then immediately went to a rock concert the next morning. “I feel like shit,” he agrees. “Sir.”

Mikhail nods. “I would prefer not to bring you back there.”

“So don’t.” Clint takes a few more breaths, then pushes himself slowly upright, managing to lean against the wall. He meets Mikhail’s eyes for the briefest moment before looking away.

“That choice is up to you, Agent Barton. As it always is.”

Clint touches his raw lower lip, then sighs. “I know.” He rubs his eyes. “Christ.”

“Take a moment. I will return.” Mikhail gets up, leaving the book on the floor, and leaves. Clint watches him go with heavy eyes, half-contemplating falling back asleep. At least when he’s asleep he doesn’t have to deal with the shit-show that his life has become.

He doesn’t get a chance. Mikhail comes back with a small bowl and a glass bottle of what looks like water. He sits back on the chair and sets the bottle on the floor, then holds the bowl in both hands and looks at Clint expectantly.

There’s a long pause between them, while Clint’s sluggish brain tries to work out what the fuck the man wants from him. He looks at the bowl, then at Mikhail. After a moment, the lightbulb comes on. “Oh. Yeah. Okay.”

He doesn’t let himself think about it. He can’t. He forces his body to roll until he’s on his knees, and then he crawls the five feet to the chair. Kneels in front of Mikhail. Doesn’t meet his eyes.

“Very good,” Mikhail says, and he picks up the spoon. “Next time, be quicker.”

 _Don’t make me wait._ “Yes sir,” Clint mutters, and he accepts the spoonful of disgusting mush. He doesn’t have the energy to be embarrassed. Mikhail is just taking care of him. Like he always does.

He only makes it through about half the bowl before shaking his head at the next offered spoonful. “No more, please.”

“Alright.” Mikhail sets it aside and offers him the water in slow, measured sips. When the bottle is empty, he sets it down and gently cups Clint’s chin. “Have you made a decision, then?”

“What?” Clint looks at him, then away.

“About if we need to go back.” Mikhail’s grip tightens, bordering on painful. Clint grunts. “I understand the need to keep your secrets, Agent Barton. But there is no point in this situation. Either you will tell me, or the Cube will rip them from you. If you chose the first path, I promise your punishment for lying to me will be minimal. If you chose the second…” he lets his voice trail off, but the threat is there.

He wants to. It would be so much easier to fold. To stop fighting. _I’m from the future. I time traveled here on accident and I just want to go home._ It’s on the tip of his tongue, and he wants so goddamn badly to give in.

“I can’t,” he whispers, his voice cracking. He leans forward until his head is resting on Mikhail’s knee. “There’s too much at risk.”

He’s not sure if that last part is directed at himself or Mikhail, but either way the man hears him. “So be it,” he says, and he pushes Clint away. Clint lets the momentum of the gentle shove roll him onto the ground. “I will call the guards.”

There’s a low laugh near his ear, loud enough to make him flinch, and Loki slithers into his view. “Oh, little Hawkeye,” he says, amusement thick in his voice. “You are in so much trouble.”

“No,” Clint moans. “Get out of my head.”

“Ah,” Loki says, waving a finger. “Now why in the cosmos would I do that, when I’m having so much fun here?”

The guards come in and haul Clint upright. He manages to use his feet a little bit as they frog-march him back to the room. They strap him down like last time, then step back, leaving him to stare at the Cube as it gently pulses with blue light. He can see the yellow tinges around it now— _must be the housing unit making it look more blue. I wonder why they—_

“Have you figured it out yet?” Loki asks, materializing next to the Cube. “Where they got it from?”

Clint looks to the side. Mikhail is preoccupied with the techs and not paying attention to him, so he risks a quiet, “Fuck off.”

Loki chuckles. “He’s right, you know.” Clint doesn’t respond. “It’s your fault that you’re in this position.”

“Save the speech,” Clint mutters. He tugs half-heartedly on the straps at his wrist, but it just makes the bruises ache.

“After all,” Loki says, nonchalantly straightening his stupidly fancy shirtsleeves, “you’re the one who told them about the base.”

The memory hits him, then, and it’s probably good that he’s already sitting down. Lukas, triumphantly smiling when Clint asked about the Omaha base.

_“How was your trip?”_

_“It was very fruitful. Although not in the way I had hoped.”_

_“Still can’t find your physicist, huh?”_

_“No, but we found other, more…interesting things. Thank you again for the information, Agent Barton. You have done HYDRA a great service.”_

“Jesus Christ,” Clint whispers, wishing he could curl up in a ball and scream. _You fucking led them right to it._

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Loki says, dragging translucent fingers over the Cube’s surface. “You tried to avert a disaster, and in doing so you made an even worse problem.” He smiles. “Such a disappointment, you are. Small wonder SHIELD has not sent anyone else for you.”

“Don’t.” He blinks, feeling tears well up in his eyes. “Just…don’t.”

“It’s hard to make those decisions, isn’t it?” Loki asks, stepping closer. Cold lips brush Clint’s ear, and he shudders reflexively. “You never were very good at being alone. Even your better impulses are…self-destructive.”

“I…”

Loki hums quietly, dragging a fingertip over the restraints at Clint’s wrists. “You were made to take orders, Hawkeye. Made to follow.” The fingertip slides up Clint’s arm, then over to the hollow of his throat. “Why are you fighting your true nature?”

“I can’t let them just…” Clint gestures hopelessly with his fingers. The tears spill over, hot and salty on his skin.

“Everything you do turns out wrong.” Loki cups his cheek, his expression suddenly gentle. “Wouldn’t it be easier to let someone else take charge?”

Mikhail comes back over, then, and Loki gracefully steps back. Mikhail pauses as he notices the tears on Clint’s cheeks. “Agent?”

“Fuck off,” Clint mutters, although he’s not sure if he’s talking to Loki or Mikhail. “Leave me alone, please.”

Mikhail gives him an odd look, but doesn’t say anything. He just adjusts the electrodes, then nods to the techs. Underneath him, the chair hums. The Cube glows, a bright point of light that burns his eyes. It pulses once, twice, and then—

_“What the fuck, Barney? How could you do that?”_

_“We’ve come a long way since Budapest.”_

_“This is the fight of our lives. We’re going to win, whatever it takes.”_

_“Under different circumstances, this would be totally awesome.”_

The machine stops for a moment, and Clint draws in a deep breath that sets him coughing. He’s been screaming, he realizes.

The techs make notes, then start up again. Clint clenches his teeth against the pain and forces his eyes to stay open this time. If he’s going to fight this, he has to see what they see. These are _his_ memories. He’s got to have some measure of control here.

_“You know your teams, you know your missions. Get the stones, get them back.”_

_“You know better than to come in here, Edith. Get OUT!”_

The machine pauses again as Mikhail murmurs something. Clint unclenches his hands and tries to think. Okay. What’s not safe? Laura. The kids. Time travel. His mission. Which leaves most of his early life, and old SHIELD missions, and the Avengers, and Natasha.

He picks a memory at random—his first mission with SHIELD—and tries to hold it in his mind as the machine hums to life, powerful and terrifying and painful—

_Green grass and blue sky and discomfort it’s been too long in this perch but Coulson said stay so he’ll stay he trusts Coulson_

The memory wavers, then shatters like a pane of glass.

_“Why, because he knows your daddy’s name?”_

_“Almost everyone in this room has had an encounter with one of the six infinity stones.”_

_“Kneel for me, Hawkeye. Kneel before your god.”_

The machine stops. Clint curses to himself. It worked, for a moment. Why didn’t it stay?

Mikhail steps into view. “Agent Barton.” Clint raises his eyes to meet his. “You are making this harder than it needs to be.”

“Well,” Clint says, his dry voice raspy, “no one ever accused me of being smart.”

Mikhail sighs. Clint tries again to think. He needs something stronger, maybe. Something more clear. He remembers that mission, but not well. He needs something sharper.

From the corner, Loki coughs quietly.

This time, when the machine comes on, Clint is ready. _A bowstring tight against his cheek his target in sight a woman with hair like blood and a smile like the sun and quick fingers that snap the man’s neck before he can finish his champagne she is deadly and beautiful and brilliant and he can’t_

Loki coughs again and the scene falls apart once more. The whirlwind of memory starts and Clint yells in frustration, trying to regain control. He sees so much danger flashing on that screen and it’s so goddamn hard to think of something without thinking about it—

The machine pauses. The techs note down something else. Loki smiles like a knife, and Clint suddenly realizes what he wants.

_Blue there is blue and yellow and it burns his mind and imprisons him and he is screaming in his own head as his fingers undo the straps on his vest and drop it to the floor and on the bed those green eyes watch him hungrily a snake he’s a snake don’t make me do this PLEASE_

The knife-smile is wider and Clint stares at the screen, remembering that moment with horrific crystal clarity.

“Who is that?” Mikhail asks, pointing.

“Loki,” Clint says, and the man himself chuckles. “Fucking…asshole.”

“You enjoyed yourself,” Loki says, coming to stand next to Mikhail. “Don’t deny it, little Hawk. I made you come undone with nothing more than my hand and my words.” He leans towards Mikhail. “The boy has a bit of a praise kink, you know. He’ll do anything for a pat on the head and a few choice phrases.”

“Stop it,” Clint hisses, even though he knows Mikhail can’t hear Loki. “Just shut up!”

Mikhail looks at him. “Agent Barton?”

“I don’t want to see this,” Clint says, and he feels the familiar tears well up in his eyes. Christ, he’s cried more in the past two days than he has his whole life. “I don’t want to see that, please.”

“Then show me what I want to see,” Mikhail says. “You have control of this, Agent Barton. We can stop as soon as you decide to cooperate.”

“Yes,” Loki whispers. He leans in close to Clint, cold lips brushing his ear. “Just give in, little Hawk. Follow your orders.”

“No,” Clint moans. “Please. I _can’t_ …”

“Again, then,” Mikhail says, and he steps away as the familiar whine of the machine pierces the air once more.

***

It is Lukas who has the idea in the end. Mikhail is reluctant to consult him—he wants to keep Clint to himself—but in the end, he decides that his pride is not worth the death of his agent. He needs Clint to give in. Not only for Mikhail's purpose, but for his own health and safety. The long-term effects are too unpredictable. He could very well die from the extended stress of using the Cube, and Mikhail is not willing to lose him so soon. And despite his dislike for the man, Lukas is the best interrogator he has ever seen. He would be foolish to turn down help from the man who broke the Winter Soldier.

So he sends one of his technicians and allows Clint to rest. The agent is breathing shallowly, sweat dripping from his pale skin. On screen, the familiar image plays. _Loki_ , Clint had called him. From what Mikhail has gathered, Clint was under his control somehow, and does not remember the time fondly.

His jaw tightens at the thought of anyone else controlling Clint. The agent is _his_ to own.

Lukas arrives swiftly. Mikhail gives him a brief update, then has the technicians run the chair for several rounds. Despite their increased extraction level, Clint manages to maintain that single memory on screen—Loki perched on the bed, watching with intent eyes as Clint slowly undresses. The scene makes Mikhail sick, but Lukas watches it with intense interest.

Mikhail waves the technicians to halt. “He has managed to hold that memory despite multiple attempts to break through.”

“He is a very strong specimen,” Lukas agrees. He examines Clint with a clinical eye, then nods to himself. “I have an idea, although you may not like it.”

“I am listening.”

Lukas nods. “He is concentrating on that memory. You need to break his concentration.” He turns back to Clint. “Drug him.”

“Drugs will not stay in his system for long enough,” Mikhail counters. “The serum has begun to alter his DNA—”

Lukas waves a hand. “I know.” He removes small leather case from his inner suit jacket, then opens it. Three capped syringes stick out, their needles gleaming inside their protective orange cases. “These were designed for use on the Soldier, should he ever become a problem in the field and need to be taken down swiftly.” He plucks one out and hands it to Mikhail. “You may use one. I would suggest you alter the dose—your agent is not the Soldier, and will likely not metabolize the same amount well. But I think you will find they work much better than other options.”

Mikhail gingerly accepts the syringe. “Thank you, my friend.”

“Of course.” Lukas smiles. “You are doing well, Mikhail. Do not consider this a setback. He is a challenge, but if you can break him, then you have truly earned your place here.”

Mikhail fights the urge to scream. He _has_ earned his place here, many times over. He earned it through his own journey with Lukas, and secured it through years of loyal service. “Yes.”

“Keep me informed,” Lukas says, and he leaves. Mikhail clenches the syringe in his hand and forces himself to breathe deeply. It would not be wise to lose his composure in front of the technicians. Low-level or not, they would betray his actions to Lukas in a heartbeat.

Clint barely flinches as Mikhail slides the syringe into his arm. “Whass-tha,” he slurs, but Mikhail just shushes him and injects barely a fifth of the contents. Lukas was right. Mikhail does not enjoy drugging people. In addition to other unpleasant effects, he finds they lessen the submission. Drugs wear off, and with them, so does the obedience.

Still, this is worth the risks. He removes the needle and re-caps it, then gives it a few moments to take effect. When Clint’s eyes unfocus, he nods to the technicians. “Reduce the extraction level. Return to section 85.”

The machine hums, and Clint mumbles a few words as his muscles try to tense under the strain. Mikhail keeps a careful eye on him as the screen displays blurry memories. A woman with red hair, smiling at him on a snowy mountainside. A large green monster rampaging through a building. A man in a red suit laying on the ground. A strikingly handsome blond man leaning against a counter, holding a cup of coffee.

“Section 86,” a technician calls. The screen fuzzes, and then reforms. The same people, plus a few more, sitting around a pile of books and what looks like _computers—_

“More,” Mikhail says. “More of that. Now.”

He watches intently. The memory is not perfect, but it’s clear enough that he can see what Clint was looking at. Very advanced computers, far more than anything HYDRA has. And on them, six images of different colors.

“No…” Clint moans. “You can’t…”

Mikhail is barely listening. He recognizes one of them. It’s the same gem sitting in the Cube. The same gem that is powering the very machine he is using. He has the technicians pause the screen and steps closer, examining the image in front of him.

“Sir,” one of them says. “There’s another memory related to this.”

“Show me.”

The scene changes in a flash—Clint is standing in a room, listening to the green monster talk.

_“Clint, now you’re going to feel a little discombobulated from the chronoshift, don’t worry about it.”_

_“Wait, wait a second. Let me ask you something. If we can do this, you know…go back in time, why don’t we just find baby Thanos?”_

The green monster offers a response that Mikhail can’t hear, and the image pauses. “That’s it, sir,” the technician says. “He’s starting to fight us again.”

Mikhail ignores him and stares at Clint, barely breathing as multiple pieces of information start to fall into place. Clint’s caginess with information. His odd references to things Mikhail doesn’t understand. One of his first questions, all those months ago. _What year is it?_

_If we can go back in time…_

Clint stares back at him with horror in his eyes as awareness slowly returns. “No,” he whispers. “No, please…”

Time travel?

_Time travel?_

His heart pounding in his chest, he steps closer to Clint and puts a hand on his shoulder. “I have been asking the wrong question,” he murmurs. “ _Where_ you are from is irrelevant, isn’t it?” He leans down so they’re face-to-face. “Tell me the truth, Agent Barton. What year were you born?”

“I…” Clint’s chest heaves as he tries to struggle, but the injection has not worn off completely. He barely manages to twitch. “No, no, no…”

“Agent Barton,” Mikhail says. “Tell me. Now.”

“I can’t, please, I can’t…” Tears are slipping from his eyes again and he looks up at Mikhail desperately. “Please don’t make me.”

“What year?” Mikhail keeps his voice

Clint sobs and leans forward as much as the restraints will allow. “No…”

“What. Year?”

A soft keening noise escapes him. Mikhail does not ask again. He just adopts a calm expression and waits. He has all the time he needs.

Finally, Clint looks up at him with red-rimmed eyes and a truly miserable expression. “1984,” he says, barely audible. “I was born in 1984.”

 _1984_.

_Time travel._

"Well, well," Mikhail says. A peal of delighted laughter escapes him, and he grins, feeling triumph unfurl in his chest. " _That_ certainly changes the game."

END OF PART ONE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm breaking this story up into multiple parts to help me keep track of various arcs, but at this time I have no plans to start a new document or anything. This is just to help me organize better. So yeah, that was part one. Hope you enjoyed all the pain and suffering!
> 
> Side note: from what I've been reading (a phrase which here means googling), Clint's birthdate is a bit up in the air. Google says September 1964, but another source says January 7, 1971. I'm sorry but movie Clint does not look mid-to-late fifties to me. So for my purposes here, he's got the same birth year as Natasha, (1984). Puts him at 40, which I feel is much more reasonable. Plus, Natasha.


	33. Chapter 32: INTERLUDE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somewhere out there, there is a HYDRA base. And somewhere in that base is Clint Barton. Her best friend. Waiting for a rescue he probably thinks isn’t coming.

“How long has it been?”

“For us?” The SHIELD agent scratches his head. “About thirty-six hours.”

“And for him?”

“No one knows.” He gives her a tablet, and she scans over the mission. “You do understand there’s a possibility—”

“I know the dangers,” Wanda interrupts. She doesn’t need them listed out. She studied at Bruce Banner’s side long enough to understand the intricacies of time travel. “He would do the same for me.”

“I know.”

She nods. “Anything else?”

“This is where we’re sending you.” He shows her a map. “That’s the last signal we got from the retrieval team. We don’t know what you’ll be dropping into, so be prepared for anything." He sounds confident, although the expression on his face says otherwise.

Red aura flicks over her fingers, and Wanda allows a small smile to spread on her face. “Do not worry about me, Agent. I am ready.”

The agent nods. “I know.”

He hands her the helmet, and she pulls it over her tucked-up hair. Then she climbs up on the platform and nods to the man at the control station. “Ready.”

“Wanda!”

She turns in time to see a woman running towards the platform, her long brown hair streaming behind her. Laura Barton climbs the stairs to the platform, heedless of the agents shouting at her, and wraps Wanda in a fierce hug. “Bring him back to me. To us."

“I will,” Wanda promises.

Laura steps back into the arms of the agents, and Wanda looks to the woman at the controls. “I’m ready.”

She nods. The alarm sounds, and beneath her, the floor opens, dropping her into the expanse of time. Wanda navigates the tunnels with practiced ease, following the instructions of the time GPS. She lands in a dark forest, the chill embracing her as the time suit morphs into something more period-appropriate.

Wanda starts her clock and turns in a slow circle. The moon overhead is a sliver of light, but it’s enough to see faint shadows of trees and distant mountains. Somewhere out there, there is a HYDRA base. And somewhere in that base is Clint Barton. Her best friend. Waiting for a rescue he probably thinks isn’t coming.

_Bring him back to me._

“I’m here, Clint,” she says to the night, and she starts walking. “It’s time to come home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys didn't think I was gonna leave him out there all on his own, did you? 
> 
> (not that the pain and suffering is over. but there's hope on the horizon!)


	34. Chapter 33

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But what is he? He’s not an Avenger, not anymore. He stepped back from that years ago, occasional reruns notwithstanding. Not a SHIELD agent either—SHIELD will never take him back after this. He’s compromised too deeply. He’s still a sniper, but that on its own has never been enough. What good is having those skills if he doesn’t have anyone to use them for?

Clint Barton disappears.

Physically, he stays in the chair. He gives them _everything_. Answers their questions in a monotone voice. He tells them about the stones, and time travel, and Thanos. He watches Natasha die, listens to Thanos give his insufferable speeches, relives Tony’s sacrifice three times over. He doesn’t resist—what’s the point, now? They already know.

So he disappears. He locks himself away and just…exists.

Mikhail unties him. Gives him water. Doesn’t question further when Laura finally appears on the screen, other than to ask who she is, and nod at his brief explanation. Clint is truly grateful when he doesn’t pursue the question any further.

They finally take him back to another cell after a long time. Not his—there’s no sink, no toilet, no nothing. Just a threadbare mattress and a bucket in the corner. The guards drop him on the mattress, at least, which is a mild improvement over the floor. Clint curls up into a ball and stares blankly at the opposite wall as he tries not to think about anything.

Mikhail sits next to him. Clint expects him to ask more questions, but he just puts a hand on Clint’s head and sits quietly, letting the time pass. Clint finds himself relaxing into the touch, the small kindness soothing after hours of brutality. He lets his eyes drift shut.

“I used to work for SHIELD,” Mikhail finally says, and _that_ statement is enough to jar him back into alertness.

“You _what_?”

“I was young,” Mikhail says. “And at the time, optimistic. I thought SHIELD stood for something great. Something worth being in.”

Clint tries to process this information. “ _You_ worked for _SHIELD_?”

“Yes, Clint.” There’s a smile in his voice. “Ten years, I worked for them. I was their most loyal agent.”

“But you’re HYDRA.” He shifts enough that he can look up into Mikhail’s face.

“I was on a mission,” Mikhail says. “I made a mistake. HYDRA…acquired me.”

Having been _acquired_ by HYDRA himself, Clint can sympathize. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I just want you to know that I understand,” Mikhail says. “I had secrets to protect. People that I would have died to keep safe. When I gave them up, I thought that was the end of me.” He looks down to meet Clint’s eyes. “I thought I had betrayed everything I stood for.”

_But I have betrayed them. The world is in danger. The future is in danger and it’s my own goddamn fault, twice over._

“You will recover from this,” Mikhail says. “You are stronger than you realize. You have the potential to be so much more than another cog in SHIELD’s machine.”

“I’m not,” Clint says. “I’m…”

But what is he? He’s not an Avenger, not anymore. He stepped back from that years ago, occasional reruns notwithstanding. Not a SHIELD agent either—SHIELD will never take him back after this. He’s compromised too deeply. He’s still a sniper, but that on its own has never been enough. What good is having those skills if he doesn’t have anyone to use them for?

“I’m not anything,” he whispers, and the pain of it cuts him deeply. He tucks his head down into his elbow and fights the urge to cry.

“That is not true either.”

“Well, what am I, then?” he mumbles into his sleeve.

“You are mine,” Mikhail says simply. “Just mine.”

_I’m not,_ is on the tip of his tongue, but he bites it back. Thinks about what Loki said. _You were made to take orders, Hawkeye. Made to follow. Why are you fighting your true nature?_

If he has to be something, he could do worse than this.

“Yes sir,” he says instead, and Mikhail smiles.


	35. Chapter 34

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They get harder. Mikhail knows what he’s doing, and while not every hit draws blood, enough of them do that Clint can hear it dripping on the concrete floor. He keeps counting, trying to ground himself in the numbers and the rote response.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> currently dying of the flu, so I have no idea if this chapter makes sense. i'll read it again when my temperature is below 100 degrees. Enjoy.

Mikhail lets him sleep. When he wakes up, he’s alone; there’s a moment of peace before the previous day rushes back to him and he curls up under the weight of it. It takes a long time before he can move again, and longer before he musters the energy to sit up. There’s a bottle of water next to the mattress. He takes a few sips, then pours some in his hand to splash on his face.

He’s still sitting there when the door unlocks. “I have brought you something to eat,” Mikhail says, pulling a chair in behind him. “And we need to have a discussion.”

Clint nods. Mikhail sits on the chair and Clint folds to his knees next to him, hands on his lap, waiting. Mikhail smiles briefly and offers him something—some white slurry-looking thing—that he takes and drinks without a second thought. It tastes like chalk. He doesn’t complain.

“The problem is simple,” Mikhail says, leaning back and crossing his arms. “You lied to me, Agent Barton. This needs to be punished.”

“I’m sorry,” Clint says, and he dares a brief look up to see if Mikhail is angry or not. He doesn’t _look_ irritated, but that’s not always a good indicator. “Honestly.”

“I am sure you are. That alone does not absolve you.”

Clint shudders. “The Cube…?”

“Was not punishment. That was a tool to extract the truth.” Mikhail pauses. “I understand _why_ you chose to lie. But as I have taught you repeatedly…”

“Actions have consequences,” Clint says, the words heavy in his mouth.

“Very good.” Mikhail stands and tugs the half-finished drink from Clint’s hand. “Get up. Remove your shirt.”

Clint pulls it over his head and tosses it on the mattress. The movement makes his ribs stand out even more sharply. He’s way too thin. _Laura would be horrified if she saw me like this._

He shakes his head. _Don’t think about her._

Mikhail produces a long thin rope from his pocket. “Hands together.” The rope is softer than he expected, but he still winces as it loops around his sore wrists. Mikhail ties it, then tilts Clint’s chin up until their eyes meet. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes sir.”

“Good.” Mikhail leaves the room for a second, then returns holding something. It’s a whip. A nasty, single-tail whip like the one from their very first session. The sight of it makes Clint’s blood run cold.

“I—” he starts, but he cuts himself off. He doesn’t really have anything to say anyway. Nothing is going to save him from this.

“What?" Mikhail asks softly.

Clint swallows heavily and finally manages to tear his gaze away. “Nothing,” he says, offering his wrists to be tied.

Mikhail nods. He takes a strip of cloth out of his pocket, then wraps it around Clint’s head. “Breathe for me,” he murmurs as he ties it off, and Clint sucks in a breath he didn’t know he was avoiding. “Keep breathing. I am still here.”

Clint tries to control himself as Mikhail takes his wrists and secures them overhead somehow. He yanks on the rope a few times, but whatever he’s tied to holds up well, and the movement just rubs at his wrists. The pain helps ground him, at least a little bit, and he manages to get his respiration down to a more normal level. _C’mon Clint. You can do this. Stay calm._

“You will count these out loud for me,” Mikhail says from behind him. Clint jumps a little at the sound of his voice and tilts his head back. “If you lose track or say the wrong number, I will begin again. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir.” Clint takes another deep breath.

“Alright. We will begin.”

“Wait. I—” He stops again.

Soft steps come from behind him, then Mikhail’s hand gently rests on his shoulder. “What is it?”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I really am. I just…I need you to know that.”

“I understand, Agent Barton. I do.”

The hand disappears and Mikhail steps back to wherever he was before, then clears his throat. “We will begin,” he says again, and Clint does his best not to tense up. It’ll hurt less that way.

The first lash is not as painful as it could be, and he’s glad that Mikhail is easing him into it. “One.”

“Tell me why we are doing this,” Mikhail says. Conversationally, like he's not trying to whip someone to pieces at the same time.

“What?”

He strikes again. “We are doing this because you broke a rule. You lied to me. Say it."

“Two. I broke a rule. I lied to you.” Another strike. “Three. Four. Five.”

“Now you are facing the consequences for doing so. Agreed?”

“Six. Yes, sir. Seven.”

He counts three more, and on the tenth one, feels the skin split. Blood slowly rolls down his heated body. “Say it again. Tell me what you did."

"Broke a rule. Lied."

"That's right. Whose fault is it that we are doing this?"

Clint swallows. "Mine. It's my fault."

They get harder. Mikhail knows what he’s doing, and while not every hit draws blood, enough of them do that Clint can hear it dripping on the concrete floor. He keeps counting, trying to ground himself in the numbers and Mikhail's questions. He starts really screaming around the twentieth one, which is honestly longer than he’d thought he’d last, but Mikhail doesn’t even pause. He just keeps going, one merciless hit after another—and like a good little soldier, Clint just keeps on counting.

It ends, at some point. The last number comes without his brain even registering what it is. He’s vaguely aware of a cessation in the pain, a pause in the torture, and then a touch to his skin that makes him jump.

"One more time, Agent," Mikhail says. He walks around Clint to meet his eyes. "Why did we do this?"

"I lied to you," Clint chokes out. The room is spinning around him. "It's my fault we're here."

"That is correct, Agent. Next time will be worse." He grips Clint's chin and forces his attention. "Are you going to lie to me again?"

Clint desperately shakes his head. "No." _God_ , no. He lets out a sob.

“Shhh,” Mikhail murmurs into his ear as he loosens the knot around Clint’s wrists. “That is all I wanted to know."

"I won't," Clint mumbles. "I promise. I'm sorry. Please don't."

The knot comes free and Clint falls into Mikhail's arms. "Shh. It is over, Agent. You were very good for me.”

Either it’s a delayed endorphin rush or Loki might have been onto something with the whole praise kink thing, because Clint fucking _melts_ at those words. Mikhail grunts in surprise as Clint leans on him heavily, recovering just enough to help him walk over the the mattress. “On your stomach. Lay still.”

“Yes, sir,” Clint mumbles. He pulls down the blindfold as Mikhail helps lower him down, then sprawls on his stomach and buries his face in his forearms.

“Antibiotic ointment,” Mikhail warns, and there’s a sudden stinging in his back that hurts with a sharper intensity. “Hold still.”

“Sorry.” He clenches a fist, trying to channel the pain that way, and forces himself to relax.

Mikhail finishes spreading the ointment. “Drink this,” he says, setting the slurry drink next to him. “And the water. I expect both to be finished when I come back.”

Clint flinches at that. “You’re leaving?”

“Yes.” Mikhail stands up. Clint turns his head to the side, straining to look up at him. “I will return later.”

He doesn’t give Clint a chance to argue. He just leaves. The door slams shut with a foreboding sound and Clint closes his eyes against the despair welling up in him.

“Everybody leaves you, don’t they?” a voice asks, and Loki appears next to him, lounging against the wall. “Such a shame. But then again, there isn’t much worth staying for, is there?” His cruel green eyes flick over Clint. “You’re quite a mess.”

“Go away,” Clint growls, rolling his head back down into his arms.

“If I went away, you’d be truly alone,” Loki counters. He drums his fingers on the floor. “Is that what you really want?”

Clint closes his eyes again. He just wants to sleep, he’s so fucking tired of Loki and Mikhail and he feels so goddamn _useless_ —

The lights go out.

It takes him a moment to notice, at first, or maybe for his brain to believe it. But when he lifts his head from his arms, he’s met with a deeper darkness. There’s not a sliver of light anywhere in the cell. He can’t even see his own hands, which are clenching into the mattress as he mutters, “No, no, no, no, no, _no_ …”

“Oh my,” Loki says, sounding amused. “That’s got you riled up, hasn’t it?”

Clint ignores him, pushing up onto his knees to crawl over to the door. It hurts, but he ignores it. He feels around the door, fingers noting another small hatch on the lower section. It doesn’t open when he pushes on it, and neither does the door itself. “Mikhail!” he shouts, slamming a hand on the door. It echoes, but no one answers. “MIKHAIL!”

“And you’re _crying_ ,” Loki says with delight. “How interesting.”

He is crying. Tears are sliding down his face and he doesn’t even have any interest in stopping them. “Mikhail,” he calls again, but it’s more a broken whisper than anything. He kneels there, head against the door, feeling the rough metal underneath his scarred palms. “ _Please_.”

“Nobody’s coming for you,” Loki murmurs, kneeling next to him. He winds his fingers in Clint’s hair and pulls his head back sharply. Clint can see him, despite the darkness, and those green eyes are bright with a cruel happiness. “All you have is me, little pet.”

Loki releases him and Clint takes in a shuddering breath. “Mikhail,” he says one more time, a desperate plea that barely reaches his own ears.

Then he puts his head back against the door and sobs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good god I’m so mean to him. Why do you guys keep reading this?


	36. Chapter 35

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn’t know how to make this _stop._ He has no idea how. Mikhail hasn’t asked him any questions. He doesn’t have anything that he’s holding onto to give up.

The lights don’t come back on, and eventually Clint makes his way back over the thin mattress and sprawls on it. He lays on his side, too tired to care that it hurts his new wounds, and stares into the suffocating darkness.

_It’s okay. You’re okay. You can do this._

He should make a plan, he knows. HYDRA knows that time travel is a possibility, which means absolutely everything he knows and loves is in grave danger. Of course, they only know what he could tell them, but the organization has done more with less before. _There was that one mission with Natasha…_

No. He can’t get distracted. He has to think of a plan.

_He said he’d come back. You can do this._

“When were Pym Particles made?”

Loki snorts in derision. “How should _I_ know?”

“I don’t know.” Clint sits up and tugs his knees to his chest. It’s cold in here. He hates being cold. He’d originally wanted Laura to build the farm with him in Southern California, but she’d wanted to be in Missouri so they could be closer to her mother in case of emergency. _I mean the snow isn’t really that bad in Missouri, all things considered. Although I guess there was that one winter…_

“Focus, goddamnit,” he mutters, burying his face in his knees. “Come on, Hawk.”

Plan, plan. He needs a plan. There’s got to be a way to stop this.

_He said he’d come back. He’s never lied before._

_Yeah, but you lied to him, didn't you?_

“You should probably start with getting out of this room,” Loki comments. He’s managed to conjure a fucking tennis ball, of all things, which he’s throwing and catching with annoying accuracy. “Before you make any grand plans.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Clint snarls. “I _know_ —”

He cuts off as the door lock clangs open and Mikhail comes in, bringing with him a flood of light from the hallway. Clint is moving before he really realizes it, pushing up and turning onto his knees. His eyes greedily drink in the dim light, and has to force himself to pull away. He meets Mikhail’s gaze for a brief moment before dropping his eyes back down. “Hello, sir.”

“Agent.” Mikhail’s voice is clipped and formal.

Still in trouble, then. Well, that’ll probably go on for awhile.

“Did you do as I instructed?” Mikhail asks.

“Yes, sir,” Clint says, his voice cracking. He gestures towards the empty bottles.

“Good.” Mikhail kneels next to him and inspects his back. “These are healing well.”

They are. Part of Clint wants to be naive and say its because of the ointment, but he knows better. He knows from partially overheard conversations and various hints from Elizaveta that Mikhail’s been doping him with the super serum. He’s felt it too—he heals faster, he’s stronger, his movements are quicker. His eyesight, already sharp, has improved too. Things like this—things that would have previously knocked him out for days on end—heal quickly and with limited scarring. It would be amazing…if it was voluntary. But he never asked for this.

“Is there anything you would like to say to me?” Mikhail asks. “Anything at all?”

_Please let me out of here._

“No, sir,” Clint mumbles. “I don’t have anything to say.”

There’s an almost disappointed sigh. “Alright.” He collects the empty bottles and puts new ones down, then gets up. “Drink these.”

“You’re leaving again?”

“Yes.”

Clint snags his wrist as he pulls away. “Can…can you leave the lights on?”

Loki snickers at his pleading tone, but Clint doesn’t care. He stares up at Mikhail and waits for his answer.

“The last time this happened,” Mikhail says softly, “I told you to think about what it means to talk to me.”

“I do want to talk to you,” Clint says. “I—you said you understood—I had to—I couldn’t just _tell_ you—” He trips over the words, his brain working faster than his mouth as he tries to think of _anything_ that will convince Mikhail to leave the lights on.

“I do understand, Agent. But as I said before, that does not absolve you.” He pulls his wrist away. “I thought you learned the lesson previously. Apparently, I was wrong. So I must teach it again.”

“I get it. I do, sir. I swear.” Clint curls his fingers into the mattress. “I want to talk to you. Please. _Please_.”

“We will see.”

He leaves, taking the hallway light with him. Clint moans and buries his face his hands. _Don’t think about it. You’ll be okay._

“ _That_ went well,” Loki says. “Maybe you should try crying for him next time.” He chuckles. “You do look very pretty when you cry.”

“Why are you here?” Clint asks, turning just enough to look at him through one eye. “Seriously.”

“Because you want me to be.” Loki rubs his hands together, summoning a green bolt of energy that crackles between his palms.

“I don’t want you here,” Clint protests, flinching as Loki throws the bolt at him. He makes another one and smiles wickedly. “Why the hell would I _want_ you here?”

“I don’t know,” Loki says, throwing another bolt. “It’s your head, Hawkeye. I’m just playing in it.”

Clint sighs and turns his head back down into the mattress. “Well, fuck off.”

“Mmm. Later, perhaps.” Another bolt explodes against the wall. “But for the moment, we have more interesting things to discuss.”

“This isn’t a fucking slumber party, Loki. I’m not discussing shit with you.”

“Ah,” Loki says, tossing a bolt between his hands. “But I know what your master wants, little hawk.”

That gets his attention, and he props up on his elbows to meet Loki’s eyes. “What?”

“I know what he wants,” Loki repeats.

“And are you gonna share with the class, or…?” Clint scowls at him.

“I suspect you can figure it out.” Loki claps his hands and the green bolt shatters. He smiles at Clint. “Think about it, Hawkeye. It will come to you eventually.”

He doesn’t provide anything else, no matter how much Clint needles or threatens him. He just sits there, playing with his stupid magic bolts, and occasionally tossing one at Clint. Eventually, Clint just drops his head back down to the mattress and falls asleep.

When he wakes up, the lights are still off. He takes a deep breath, then pushes up to his knees. His back hurts, but he at least isn’t bleeding. He can practically _feel_ the marks knitting themselves together.

His wrists are healed too, although there’s some pretty nasty scarring around both of them. The super serum apparently doesn’t cure everything. He scratches at one absentmindedly.

“Have you figured it out yet?” Loki asks. He’s still lounging in the corner, except now he’s now on some kind of fancy couch with a stack of books next to him. Clint scowls a little. “Ooh. Judging by that face, apparently not.”

“Why are you _here_?” Clint asks. “Seriously. Where’s Natasha?”

Loki sighs. “For the millionth time, Hawkeye, this is _your_ head. I am here because you want me to be.”

“I don’t,” Clint says stubbornly. He contemplates screaming into the darkness, then goes ahead and does it anyway. Not like anyone except Loki is there to hear him.

He doesn’t know how to make this _stop_. He has no idea how. Mikhail hasn’t asked him any questions. He doesn’t have anything that he’s holding onto to give up.

“You sound frustrated,” Loki comments, turning a page in his book.

Clint flips him off, then moves to lean against the wall. His back burns, but he’s tired of laying on his stomach. “If you’re not going to be helpful,” he says to Loki, “you could at least leave me alone.”

“I am being helpful,” Loki says.

“How the hell does that constitute being helpful?” Clint waves a hand at him. “If you were being helpful, you’d tell me what the fuck he wants, so I could get out of here.”

“I told you, you already know what he wants. You’re just not paying attention.”

“I _don’t_ know what he wants.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Oh my god, it’s like a broken record.” Clint picks up the water bottle and drains it, then hurls it across the room at Loki. It passes through him— _fucking_ _dickface_ —and shatters into pieces on the opposite wall. “Seriously. Leave.”

“Mmm.” Loki turns another page. “Riddle me this, Hawkeye. How did you make him stop the last time?”

“I told him what he wanted to hear,” Clint says. “About Natasha.”

“So what does he want to hear this time?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” Clint snarls. “I already told him everything. He knows about the stones, and time travel, and Thanos.” _And everything else you tried to keep safe._ His voice breaks a little, and he has to take a deep breath.

Loki rolls his eyes. “You are extraordinarily dense sometimes.”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?”

“It means you are—”

Clint cuts him off. “Stop. Just…just stop.”

Loki sighs. “He is asking you if you have anything to say to him, Hawkeye.”

“Well, I don’t. What am I supposed to say? Let me go? I’m sorry? He’s not gonna listen to any of it.”

“He doesn’t want your apologies, you dimwitted little pigeon. He wants _you_.” Loki doesn’t appear to move, but he’s suddenly next to Clint, towering over him. Clint doesn’t see the slap coming, but he feels it in every bone in his body. His face burns. “Honestly, Hawk, it’s like I taught you nothing.”

“He’s already _got_ me,” Clint spits, feeling blood drip from his lower lip. “I’m here, aren’t I? And it’s pretty damn clear that I’m not going anywhere.”

_And no one else is coming for you._

“He wants _you_ ,” Loki repeats. “And you keep lying to him about who you are.” He grips Clint’s chin in a surprisingly gentle hold. “Tell him a truth, little bird, and see what he does with that.”

He’s right. Clint can feel it in his bones. Mikhail has wanted him from the beginning. He said as much in their first moments together. _It sounds like you have an interesting past. I look forward to hearing more about it. I want to know you._

He’d fought and lied because of what he had to keep safe. But he has nothing to keep safe anymore.

Loki lets go of his face and kneels in front of him. Clint looks at him through blurry vision, realizing after a moment that he’s crying again. “No one is coming to save you,” Loki murmurs, catching one of the tears as it falls. “It’s time to give in, Clint. It’s time to _stop fighting_.”

Clint draws his knees into his chest and wraps his arms around them, then buries his face. “Please go away,” he whispers, and to his surprise, Loki does.

He stays like that for a long time—curled and miserable and cold—until the lock clangs in the door and it opens.

“Agent,” Mikhail says softly. “Are you well?”

Clint raises his head, surfacing from his misery long enough to register the other man’s presence. Then he moves slowly, shifting onto his knees. “Yes, sir.”

“Are you lying to me again?”

“I—“ he coughs. “I don’t know, sir.”

Mikhail gives him a long, appraising look, then nods. “Alright. Is there anything you want to say to me?”

_Tell him a truth, little bird, and see what he does with that._

“When Barney and I ran away from the orphanage,” Clint says quietly, “we ended up at a circus. That was where I learned to shoot. There was a man called the Swordsman, and another called Trick Shot, and they taught me everything I know about weapons.” He coughs again. “When I was thirteen, I caught the Swordsman embezzling money from the circus. I confronted him. Said I was going to turn him in.” He looks up at Mikhail. “He beat me half to death for it. Left me lying in an alley, bloody and broken and bruised. It took me months to recover.”

Mikhail is quiet for a long time, long enough that Clint chances another glance up at him. He looks thoughtful. Introspective. Finally he says, “Why are you telling me this?”

“I lied to you,” Clint whispers. “I made a mistake. I want to make it right.”

“And you think telling me stories will fix what has happened between us?”

“I—“

“You lied to me, Agent. You have been lying to me since the beginning. I do not forgive this breach of trust so easily. I treated you with kindness, and you repaid me with lies.”

Clint feels new tears flood his eyes, and looks down at the mattress under his knees. So that’s it, then. He’s doomed to sit in the dark until he rots.

_Do you deserve anything less?_ whispers that cold voice inside him. _You couldn’t keep your family safe. You can’t keep yourself safe. Maybe you_ should _just waste away down here. That’s all you’re good for anymore._

“But,” Mikhail says, putting a hand on Clint’s head, “I appreciate that you are trying to make up for your mistakes. I will remember this.”

Clint grabs that lifeline with everything he’s got left. “Thank you, sir.”

He gets more water. He gets a second blanket. He even gets some food, bland and tasteless as it is. Each thing costs him a story, another tidbit of his life that Mikhail listens to with rapt attention. No detail goes unnoticed. No question unquestioned.

Finally, Mikhail stands from where he’d been sitting next to Clint. “Thank you,” he says, “for sharing this part of yourself.”

“You’re leaving?” Clint sits up against the wall.

“You are not my only responsibility, Agent Barton. I have other roles to fulfill here.” He pauses by the door. “But I will return tomorrow.”

He leaves. The door clangs shut.

And the lights, blessedly, stay on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some of you have been asking about when the "comfort" part of this story will come. It will, eventually. I don't have a chapter plan. I can't tell you exactly when. Hell, I'm not even sure exactly when. This story just kind of comes out of me in pieces at a time, and I try and make them make some kind of sense. I'm pretty sure at this point that the awful dark parts are done, and it should go up from here. But I'm not sure. So if this is too dark or painful for you to read, then please stop for your own mental health. You won't hurt my feelings. We all like what we like. I prefer dark, gritty, hopeless stories, so that's what I tend to write. We'll get happy, at some point. I haven't forgotten about Wanda coming to save him. It WILL happen. I'm just not sure when. 
> 
> Sorry if that was very rambly, but I also have a nasty case of mono right now so I'm a little half-starved and very sick. I hope you guys enjoy this chapter. Please keep leaving comments! I don't always reply, but I read every one of them and they make me so happy. Also, hope y'all like Loki. He's a fun little bastard to write.


	37. Chapter 36

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He pries at her fingers like an angry toddler, and suddenly Wanda has had enough. Her anger boils over and she slams him up against the shaking wall, pressing the knife to his throat. He stills immediately. “Hey—okay—let’s not do anything rash.”
> 
> “My best friend,” she says, practically snarling the words, “is being held prisoner by your organization. I am here to rescue him, and you are going to help me.”

“Just tell me where they took him,” Wanda says, “and I will let you go.”

The HYDRA soldier she has pinned against the wall shakes his head. “I’m not telling you anything, bitch.” He strains against her telekinesis, but it’s laughably easy to keep him still. “Hail HYDRA.”

Wanda suppresses the wave of irritation. She’d hit the Russian HYDRA base two days ago, only to find it nearly empty. There had been a handful of soldiers maintaining and guarding the place; she’d easily made quick work of them. Most hadn’t known anything about a SHIELD prisoner being kept here. One had seen Clint, but only for a brief moment. This man she was interrogating now was the only one who’d had direct, prolonged contact with Clint. She’d ended up chasing him on foot through the base, finally catching him in their cafeteria where she’d promptly thrown him against the wall and demanded to know where Clint was. It was a stupid move on her part. She'd _meant_ to take the base without using her powers any more than necessary. It was vital that she keep her mission as secret as possible. Throwing someone against the wall with nothing more than her mind and will was decidedly _not secret_.

Well. Since she's already lost control, she might as well finish the job...

“Look,” Wanda says politely. With her free hand, she manipulates a cafeteria tray into the air. As soon as his eyes focus on it, she clenches her fist and shatters it into dozens of pieces. They fall to the floor with an impressively loud clatter. “If I can do that,” she says, “just imagine what I can do to you.”

The soldier looks sufficiently alarmed, and Wanda smiles coldly. “All I want to know is where they took the SHIELD agent,” she says. “Tell me, and I will let you go. If not…” She lets the threat hang in the air. She’s never actually torn a person apart like that, and isn’t really sure she’d have the stomach for it.

But the implication seems to work, since the blood drains from the soldier’s face. “I don’t know,” he says, all traces of arrogance gone from his voice. “They flew him out and I don’t know where they went. I can take you to the flight room if you want. If the flight is logged you can see the destination.”

“Show me,” she orders.

The flight room is large, but cramped with oversized computer parts. The soldier flips a switch and the computers spark into life. Above their heads, florescent lights flicker. It vividly reminds Wanda of Strucker’s base, and she has to force her nausea back down at the thought. “Flight plans,” she tells the soldier, and he sits at one of the screens. “And don’t try anything else. I’ll know.”

He doesn’t. He brings up the flight plans and searches back until he finds what they’re looking for. “There,” he says, pointing. “It’s probably this one. The manifest is blacked out.”

“Is that unusual?”

“No. But it means they didn’t want anyone to know who was on the plane.” He turns to look at her. “It fits with the timeframe. There’s the destination.”

Wanda leans over to look at the computer. The moment she does, the soldier turns a little more, and she just barely catches the glint of metal in his hand. A knife.

She pulls back just in time, and the knife passes through dead air. The soldier doesn’t miss a beat, reversing direction and pushing up from the chair. In the cramped space, Wanda is forced to step backwards to avoid him. He presses the advantage, striking out with the knife again. She catches his wrist this time and shoves it upwards, throwing him off balance. He stumbles back a step, and this gives her enough time to get her hands between them and shove him with all the power she can muster.

The soldier blasts backwards, past the chairs and computers and _through_ the wall, leaving a massive crater in the concrete. He falls to the ground in the room beyond the computers, tumbling twice before coming to a stop. Wanda steps through the hole, but she doesn’t need to get close to know that he’s dead. Blood and bits of brain leak from his head in a steady stream. An expression of surprise is frozen on his face, and his eyes stare blankly at her.

Her stomach churns and she barely manages to swallow down the rising vomit. She hadn’t meant to kill him. She hadn’t meant to use her powers at all. But she’d lost control, first in the cafeteria when he ran, and now here.

Pietro’s voice echoes to her from across time. _You have to control yourself, Wanda. You can’t be angry._ A lesson she’d had to learn repeatedly under Strucker’s tutelage.

She forces her hands to relax and takes a deep breath. There isn’t _time_ for this. She has to find Clint.

Her foot nudges something on the floor. The knife. It’s just a pocketknife, but long and sharp enough that it would have caused some major damage. On impulse, she folds it back up and slips it into her own pocket.

Wanda steps back through the hole and over to the computer. The flight pattern is still up, and she easily identifies the one he was looking at. There isn’t much information there, and she’s always been better at speaking Russian than reading it. Still, she manages to make out some things. A date. A time.

And a destination. Германия.

“Germany?” she mutters. “Why Germany?”

The computer doesn’t give her any other answers. So she sends a surge of energy through it, frying the circuits, and heads back to the room where she left the first group of soldiers. She hadn’t killed them, just incapacitated their minds long enough to tie them to their chairs and leave them around their card game.

They’re still there. They start shouting at her through their gags as she steps through the door. Wanda doesn’t respond; she just stands there and waits until they slowly trickle into silence. She’d taken them completely by surprise, and there’s definitely fear behind those indignant expressions.

When the room is quiet, she takes out her gun. She hadn’t wanted to carry one at all, but Sam had insisted. They’d compromised on a realistic looking stun gun. _A single shot will knock the other guy out for at least an hour,_ the armory SHIELD agent had promised her _._ She also knows that it leaves the victim looking very dead—a useful intimidation tactic. And intimidation is what she needs right now.

“I want information,” she says. “On all your bases in Europe.” She doesn’t care about the other ones, but this will help cover her tracks at least a little. “If you tell me what I want to know, I will let you go. If you don’t, I will kill you. Are there any questions?”

She pulls the gag from the mouth of the closest soldier. “Where are the other HYDRA bases?”

“Go to hell,” he growls. “I’m not telling you shit, you fucking—“

Wanda shoots him. He collapses.

After that, the others are talkative. She gets the location of at least twelve bases spread out across the continent, information that she stores for another time. Not one of them is the one she wants to hear.

“Are those all the bases?” she asks. “Think very, _very_ carefully. I would hate for there to be any…mistakes on your part.”

“That’s all of them,” one of the soldiers says, looking back at his friends. It’s a nervous glance, and Wanda can see the lie on his face clear as day.

“You’re lying,” she says. “There’s more.”

“There’s not,” he says. “I promise. That’s it.”

There’s something else in his voice. A note of fear? No, not fear. Apprehension. Wanda looks at each of the men in turn, and they all share the same tight expression. Like they’re waiting for something to happen.

“What’s going on?”

She gets her answer a few moments later in the form of a screeching alarm. Wanda flinches against the noise and grabs the nearest soldier, shoving her gun underneath his chin. “What does that mean?” she shouts in his ear. “What is the alarm for?”

He flashes an insane smile. “You’d better start running.”

Wanda shoves the gun harder into his chin. “How do I stop it?”

“You can’t!” he laughs. “It’s already started!”

The ground rumbles underneath her feet, and she has to grab the edge of the table to keep herself steady. Dust starts to fall from the ceiling.

“Hail HYDRA,” the soldier shouts over the alarm, still laughing. The rest of the group takes up the chant with him.

The ground rumbles again. A explosion echoes from somewhere else in the base, followed by a second, louder one. The soldier is right, she needs to leave _now_.

_But Clint…_

If she leaves, they will die. And so will her last chance of finding Clint.

She can’t let that happen. She _won’t_.

Wanda shoves the laughing soldier away from her and vaults over the table to the nervous one, the one who had lied to her about the number of bases. He’s not shouting with the rest of them; he's staring mutely at the ceiling with an expression of terror. She pulls out the knife and cuts the zipties she’d used to restrain them, then yanks him out of the chair. Taken by surprise, he lets her drag him out of the room and halfway down the hall before he starts fighting her grip. “What are you—let me go!”

He pries at her fingers like an angry toddler, and suddenly Wanda has had enough. Her anger boils over and she slams him up against the shaking wall, pressing the knife to his throat. He stills immediately. “Hey—okay—let’s not do anything rash.”

“My best friend,” she says, practically snarling the words, “is being held prisoner by _your_ organization. I am here to rescue him, and you are going to help me.”

His nervous face tries to twist into an arrogant sneer, but it doesn’t quite work. “Says who?”

A section of the ceiling above them cracks, and a thick section of pipe comes loose, falling towards them with an ominous creak. The soldier lets out a shriek of fear and dives to the side, trying to scuttle out of the way.

Wanda drops the knife and catches the pipe barely an inch before it hits her head. Red energy blooms around her as she shoves it away, ripping the chunk of pipe from the ceiling in the process. Water gushes over her and she holds out a hand, bending the remainder of the offending pipe until the water sprays the wall behind her.

The soldier is frozen on the floor, staring at her. With some effort, she brings the pulsing red aura back under control and offers a hand to help him up. “We need to leave. _Now_.”

“Okay,” is all he says.

They almost don’t make it out in time. They’ve barely hit the gravel outside when a massive explosion tosses them several yards further, sending them tumbling limb over limb. Wanda just stays down from that point, keeping her head covered until the explosions seem to come to a stop.

“I think that’s it,” the soldier says. He’s only a few feet away, in the same position as her. His face is white. “There was supposed to be only enough explosives to implode the base.”

“What _was_ that?” Wanda asks, slowly pushing herself to her knees.

“Self-destruct. It's on a twenty-four hour countdown. We're supposed to keep resetting it.” He’s staring at the burning wreck of the base. “Do you think…?”

“Your friends are dead,” Wanda says. It comes out harsher than she means it to. She doesn't care. “We need to keep moving. Someone will come to investigate.”

The soldier unsteadily gets to his feet. “We don’t have a vehicle. We—“

“I stole a car to get here,” she interrupts, standing up. “Come on.”

He follows her, still looking pale. The car is still where she left it in the forest, almost half a mile up the road. Together they pull off the branches concealing it, and climb in.

“There’s a base in Germany,” Wanda says. It’s not a question.

The soldier nods.

“Where is it?”

“I’m not sure.” He meets her eyes. “It’s a dark base. They run top-secret operations. Officially, they don’t even exist. I don’t have the clearance for the coordinates.”

She resists the urge to scream. “So how do you know?”

“One of my friends transferred there. He told me it was real.”

“Did your friend tell you where it was?”

He shakes his head. “No. I’m sorry.”

Wanda buries her face in her hands. Tears prick at her eyes, and she doesn’t bother holding them back. What’s the point? It’s taken her almost a week to get this far, and now she’s run into a complete dead end. How is she supposed to find someone who’s completely disappeared off the map? She doesn’t have time to search an entire _country_.

“Whoa…hey,” the soldier says, sounding somewhat alarmed at her crying. He shifts uncomfortably, then places an awkward hand on her shoulder. “Please don’t do that.”

Wanda takes a shuddering breath and forces herself to sit up straighter, wiping the tears from her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she says.

There’s a long silence after that. Wanda can feel the pressure of time on her shoulders, but she doesn’t know what to do with it. Germany is a big country. And she can’t exactly walk into another HYDRA base and demand answers like she did with this one.

“This guy you’re looking for,” the soldier says. Wanda glances over at him. “Is he your husband or something?”

“He’s my friend,” she whispers. “My best friend. He…” She hesitates, knowing she can’t share the whole truth. “He was…taken. By HYDRA. I need to get him back.”

“You’re SHIELD, then.” He looks at her. “And him too?”

“Yes.”

The soldier nods slowly. “I have an…acquaintance in SHIELD. Works in the intelligence sector last I heard. If you want, we could talk to her. SHIELD might have an idea. They have better intelligence than HYDRA does. I wouldn’t be surprised if they at least had an idea.”

Tears prick her eyes again, but this time they’re grateful. “Where is she?”

“She lives in Helsinki,” he says. “I can get us there.”

He looks earnest. Wanda gently reaches out with her mind. She doesn’t feel any duplicity in him. No hidden anger, no plan of a set-up. Still, she has to be sure. “Why are you helping me?”

He looks at her, then gestures back to the base. “You saved my life.”

“I blew up your friends.”

“They weren’t really my friends.”

“You work for HYDRA.”

“They conscripted me from the Navy,” he says, a look of anger stealing across his face. “I was on a boat before this. I had plans to get married. I didn’t want to work for HYDRA.”

“So you want revenge?”

He looks thoughtful for a long moment, then shakes his head. “I’ve been with HYDRA for three years. I’ve done things I’m not proud of. I—“ He pauses.

“You have red in your ledger,” Wanda says. “I understand.”

“I can’t erase the past,” he says. “But I’ve wanted to make things right for a long time. I’m tired of working for the wrong people.” 

She understands that too, better than she’ll ever know. She still has nightmares about the coldness of Ultron’s mind, the visions of death and destruction that he reveled in.

Wanda meets his eyes, but her mind is already made up. She can’t do this alone. This is the best offer she'll get.

She holds out her hand. “I’m Wanda.”

“Anatoly,” he says, shaking it.

Wanda starts the car. It takes a few tries, but eventually the engine turns over with an irritated sound, and she backs out onto the gravel road. “Alright,” she says to her unlikely ally as she firmly fixes the burning base in her rear-view mirror. “Let’s go to Helsinki.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wanda chapter! I had a little bit of writer's block with Clint's POV so I thought a change in scenery might be nice. Also thought you all might like a little ray of hope for our poor Hawkeye, even if he doesn't know it's coming.


	38. Chapter 37

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a gap now, a numbness to his mind that wasn’t there before the Cube. It’s like a missing tooth, in a way. He knows there used to be _something_ there, but he can’t remember what it felt like. The only thing there now is Loki’s whispered words, echoing in his mind.
> 
> _No one is coming to save you. It’s time to stop fighting._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for suicidal thoughts, and dub-con. Tags updated accordingly.

Story by story, piece by piece, Clint manages to claw his way out of the cell and back into some semblance of normalcy—or at least what’s passed for normal since he’s been here. He starts getting regular meals again, although he can barely eat anything. He gets his room back. He’s allowed to shave himself with Mikhail watching him like a hawk for every movement. Even Elizaveta returns, waltzing back into his life with a curt, “Time for training. Get up.” He scrambles after her to the gym, where she ruthlessly puts him on the mat at least seventeen times before finally allowing him to stop.

A routine starts to take shape. Wake up. Try to eat breakfast. Gym with Elizaveta. Shower. Study languages with various tutors—his Russian is fluent enough that he’s started moving on to others now. Dinner, sometimes alone, sometimes with Mikhail. Try to sleep. Wake up and do it all again. _Lather, rinse, repeat._ He lets the sameness carry him along. It’s easier that way.

There’s a gap now, a numbness to his mind that wasn’t there before the Cube. It’s like a missing tooth, in a way. He knows there used to be _something_ there, but he can’t remember what it felt like. The only thing there now is Loki’s whispered words, echoing in his mind.

_No one is coming to save you. It’s time to stop fighting._

Lukas occasionally interrupts his routine to ask endless questions about the time machine. _How does it work? Who designed it? What triggers it? How many people does it take to run it safely?_ Clint is hesitant to answer at first, but Lukas threatens to put him back in the Cube, and his resistance crumbles. He’s vague about it, at least. Engineering isn’t his thing. He helped build the machine, but only by following Stark’s _very_ direct instructions. It’s not like he could make one from scratch. Regardless, Lukas seems happy with the answers. Clint is pretty sure he's already started supervising HYDRA's own attempt at making one. 

Mikhail generally sees him in the evenings, but Clint can see him watching at other times. Most noticeably when he’s sparring with Elizaveta. He finds himself trying harder when he notices. _Showing off for him, more like,_ his subconscious sneers. _Trying to be the best puppet you can for your master._

 _I’m never going to go home,_ Clint snarls right back. _So I might as well make the best of what I’ve got here, yeah?_

He doesn’t think about his family. He doesn’t think about the farmhouse. He doesn’t think about the Avengers.

Still, they come to him in little moments. Like when Elizaveta teaches him the Ukrainian word for “daughter” and he chokes up, thinking about shooting with Lila in the backyard. Or when Mikhail brings him a Hershey’s chocolate bar one visit, and Clint suddenly remembers the five-pound monstrosity of a bar that Tony brought into the tower for one of their team movie nights. He tucks those moments away inside and resolves not to share them with Mikhail.

He doesn’t see Natasha anymore. Just Loki. He tries not to dwell on that.

He doesn’t see the Winter Soldier anymore either, although that one he’s not really sure what to do about. It’s not like the Soldier was particularly helpful while he was around. And while no one has asked him directly about Bucky in the future, he’s pretty sure Mikhail saw some glimpses of the fights with Thanos, and knows that _something_ is up between them. So he doesn’t ask, lest he draw more suspicion down on himself or the Soldier. No point in rocking the boat now.

It’s a few weeks after he restarts training that he _finally_ puts Elizaveta on the mat. She makes a small mistake in her footing—practically minuscule—and he takes advantage, stepping in close enough to deflect her blow and knock her further off balance. She wobbles, and he drops her with a kick to the back of the knee. From there, he pretty much goes for an undignified wrestling tackle and gets her on the ground in a headlock, her arms blocked and her feet kicking uselessly. “ _Dead_ ,” he hisses in her ear, and after a moment, she growls and taps out.

Clint rolls back to his feet, shrugging his shoulders out. Before, a victory like that would have made him cheer with delight. Now he just offers a hand to Elizaveta and pulls her to her feet. She brushes her hair out of her eyes and scowls at him before saying, “That was good.”

Clint blinks in surprise. “Come again?”

“You heard me.” She steps back. “We will work on wrestling now. You are better with standing fighting. But what do you do if you are on the ground and your opponent grabs you?”

“I…” Clint shrugs. “Get up and run?”

She rolls her eyes and drops him to the mat with an insultingly easy motion. Then she straddles his waist and pins his hands above his head.

“Whoa,” Clint says. “Okay. Hold on.”

“Get me off,” she says, apparently not noticing the screaming innuendo in her words. “Free yourself.”

He takes a second to contemplate the situation, then tries to free his hands. It’s useless—her grip is like iron—and she rolls her eyes. “Idiot.”

“Well what the hell else am I supposed to do?”

She sighs. “Use your legs.” When he doesn’t move, uncertain of what exactly she wants, she sighs again and lets go of his arms. “Alright. Trade with me.”

He takes up her spot—straddling her waist, her arms pinned above her head, and tries not to think about this exact position. “Okay, so—“

“ _Legs_.” One of her knees hits his back, and he grunts in pain, losing his grip just enough for her to pull a hand free. The rest of the fight is over in about five seconds, as she uses that hand to shove his head to the side, unbalancing him, and rolls with the momentum. They end up with her on top, his wrists pinned, and her sitting on his waist again. “Understand now?”

“You could have just said that,” Clint grumbles, very aware of the pressure of her hips against his. “Without jabbing my kidney with your bony knee,”

“Stop complaining. You try.”

He does try. He puts up a damn good effort, in fact. But Elizaveta has never gone easy on him, and today is no exception. She takes him down with practiced ease, finding openings and sensitive spots he didn’t even know existed. By the fifth round, he’s winded. She’s barely even breathing hard.

“You let me hold you down before,” he accuses, holding his arm where she'd _bitten_ him on the last round. He's flat on his back, again, and she's on top of him, again.

“I did,” she says, derision practically dripping from her voice. “But you are not listening to me like you should. You rely too much on strength and not cunning.”

Clint scowls. “Is that your way of calling me stupid?”

“Perhaps,” she says, and the irritation on her face is suddenly interrupted by an impish smile. It’s such an odd look for her that Clint is completely nonplussed by it. “Or, maybe the blood is just not circulating in your brain as it should be.”

She grinds her hips down into him for emphasis. He suddenly realizes that he’s half-hard, and that the thin sweatpants do absolutely nothing to hide his growing erection. “That’s just basic physiology,” he says, although his voice is a little more strained than he’d like. “Not my fault.” _That’s what happens when a gorgeous woman tells you to 'get her off.'_ “It’ll go away in a minute.”

Elizaveta laughs and says something that he doesn’t quite catch. Then she puts her hands on his chest. The heat of her palms bleeds through the shirt to his skin. “We will take care of it,” she says. “And then we will resume training.”

“Take care of it?” he echoes. “What does that—“ His train of thought is derailed entirely as Elizaveta leans down and kisses him.

He returns the kiss almost on reflex, his body responding before his brain catches up. “Eliza—“ he starts when she pulls back, but her fingers press against his mouth before he can finish.

“Shhh,” she says. “No talking.”

He knows he should say no. Should push her away and get up. His hands come up, but they settle at her hips instead. She kisses him again, and he kisses back.

Something screams at Clint from that empty space in his mind. Something full of memories and pain and a deep, desperate unnamed feeling that scares him. He shudders under the onslaught, trying to pull himself back to the moment. Trying to find the comforting numbness again.

Then her hand is on him, and her mouth, and he gasps a little at the sensation, his body tensing under her trailing fingers. She works on him until he is aching with need, unable to stop himself from uttering little pleading sounds in the back of his throat. It’s almost painful when she stops, pulling back so she can pull his pants off entirely and toss them to the side.

Elizaveta moves then, shifting position until her knees are on either side of his hips, her body hovering just above him. There’s no trace of warmth on her face, just coldness hidden behind a taunting smirk. She tugs on his shirt in a silent command, and he awkwardly does a half sit-up to work it up over his head. She arranges her own clothes just enough to get them out of the way, then sinks down onto him with a quiet moan.

They fuck. There is nothing gentle about it, nothing slow, and he’s perversely grateful for that. It’s just bodies moving together. Just the frantic sensations of friction and bare skin. Clint tries once to touch her, but she slams his wrist back down onto the mat and narrows her eyes at him. He gets the message.

Elizaveta comes before he does, a soft gasping sound escaping her parted lips as she rocks her hips into him. Some of the coldness fades from her expression and her shoulders relax, tension bleeding from them in waves.

When it’s over, she opens her eyes and slowly rises, sliding off him with a graceful motion. She sighs and stretches up towards the ceiling, then pulls her clothes back into place.

Clint doesn’t say anything. He keeps his hands where she put them.

She takes her time, enjoying watching him squirm, but eventually relents and takes him in hand. It only takes a few strokes before he’s over that edge, coming into her hand with a strangled moan. He lets the sensations take him, lets himself sink into that tingling heat suffusing his entire body. His eyes slip closed of their own accord, and in his mind there is nothing but blessed, blessed silence.

The feeling fades eventually. Clint opens his eyes in time to catch his clothes as Elizaveta throws them at his face. “Dress,” is all she says.

He dresses. The routine resumes. The numbness returns too, but there’s a simmering… _something_ underneath it that he doesn’t want to address. It stays there throughout the entire day, right up until he’s escorted back into his cell. There’s a tray waiting for him, but no Mikhail, which means he’ll be eating alone tonight.

Well. At least he won’t have to have an awkward conversation about what happened.

Clint sits on the bed and balances the tray on his lap. He has no idea what’s on it, and he’s learned better than to ask. He just picks up the utensils and starts cutting. The knife is stupidly dull, worse than usual, and it barely makes a dent in what he _thinks_ is a chunk of beef. He tries harder, pressing down with more force, and the meat slips away, sliding entirely off the tray and landing on his bed. Clint stares at it for a second, still holding the knife and fork in midair.

It’s rage, he realizes belatedly. The feeling that’s been beating in his heart since this morning.

Then he screams, primal and furious, and throws the entire tray across the room.

His serum-enhanced throw shatters the tray entirely, spilling not-food across the door and wall and floor. He throws the utensils for good measure, and watches them clatter across the mess with a vindictive gaze.

It’s not enough. Not even close. The fury is lodged in his chest, misting his vision red, and he thinks this must be what it feels like to be Bruce. _No wonder he likes to smash things._

Trouble is, there’s nothing in here for him to smash. Not anymore.

“Sun’s going down,” he mutters instead, and grips his head in his hands. “Sun’s going down, sun’s getting low…”

The stupid phrases actually work, at least a little, and Clint calms down enough that he can think a little. He studies the mess across the room. _Should probably clean that up._

He does his best, picking up the larger pieces of the tray and stacking them by the door. He collects the stray bits of…whatever, and piles them on top of the broken plastic. The utensils take a little longer to find—the knife had actually bounced back across the room and landed underneath the bed. Clint eventually locates it, adding it to the rest. Then he goes to the sink and rinses the remnants off his hands.

 _Too thin,_ he thinks, looking into the mirror, noting the dark circles under his eyes, the prominent cheekbones. Laura would be shocked if she could see him.

Laura. Oh God, Laura.

He remembers the slide of Elizaveta’s hands on him, and barely makes it to the toilet before he throws up. There’s barely anything to come up, but he stays there anyway, dry heaving until the nausea passes.

_You didn’t even think about her, you selfish fucking bastard._

Clint stumbles to his feet and goes back to the sink. He rinses his mouth out, then splashes water on his face. He stays there, gripping the sink, breathing deeply through his mouth, willing himself not to throw up again. _How could you do that? What the hell is wrong with you?_

Something builds inside him, and then there’s a cracking sound, and suddenly he’s standing in a sea of shattered glass with a bleeding, aching hand. The mirror is gone, the pieces of it scattered around his feet. One piece hangs by a thread; as he watches, it breaks off and falls into the sink. The concrete wall behind it is just a faded beige.

_Guess there was one more thing to smash._

The rage goes as quickly as it came, and a numb exhaustion takes its place. Clint mechanically pulls the bits of glass from his skin, wincing at each little flare of pain. Then he carefully steps over the remains of the mirror and picks them up. He takes the pieces over to the pile by the door and places them next to the rest.

There’s the last one in the sink; its a slim piece with a tapered point at the end like the tip of a sword. He picks it up, gently running his running his finger over the tip, letting out a little hiss of pain as it slices through the skin. The cut closes almost immediately; the pain fades like an afterimage.

He makes a longer cut, running it all the way through his palm. It too closes almost immediately, practically chasing the glass as it cuts through his skin. The pain is sharp, but almost in a _good_ way. He feels clear for a moment—not numb, not angry, just…clear. Clint cuts again, drawing the glass through his palm with shallow, easy precision. The blood wells around his fingers and drips onto the floor. He doesn’t care. He cuts again, and again, and again, and every time the wounds heals over without a trace.

He wonders vaguely what would happen if he cut through something more important than his palm. _If I slit my wrists with this, will I bleed out or heal first? What about my carotid? Or the femoral artery?_ The thought is almost enticing. He turns the glass in his hand, watching the light play over the reflection.

Then he shudders and gets up, taking it over to the rest of the pile. _Don’t go there, Clint._

He curls up under the thin blanket on his bed, eventually falling into a fitful sleep as sharp edges and reflections and blood flicker through his dreams. It wakes him eventually, and he stares at the ceiling for a long time before getting up and retrieving the glass piece. He tucks it under the thin mattress, then gets back under the blanket.

_Just in case._


	39. Chapter 38

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Suddenly I’m not half the man I used to be_  
>  _There’s a shadow hanging over me_  
>  _Oh yesterday came suddenly_

Clint tosses and turns for most of the night, drifting in the twilight of his waking dreams. Eventually he gives up on sleep entirely and just stares at the ceiling. _Wish I knew what time it was._ Maybe Mikhail would give him a watch if he asked?

Some time later, the door begins its usual opening sequence of beeps and clunks. Clint moves to sit at the edge of the bed. The door swings open and he looks up, expecting to see Mikhail.

Instead, it’s a nervous looking soldier. “Get up,” he says, tightening his grip on his gun. He notices the pile of scraps by the door, but doesn’t say anything.

Clint gets up. “Where’s Mikhail?”

No response. Nervous Guy gestures and Clint steps out of his cell. The gun immediately is shoved in his back. “Walk.”

“Where are we going?”

There’s a moment of hesitation and then, “Lukas wants to see you.”

Clint swallows. “Alright.”

He’s been to Lukas’s office enough that he knows the way, but he lets the soldier give him terse directions. The gun doesn’t leave his back until Clint knocks on the door and an answering, “Enter,” comes back.

He steps inside the office, closing the door behind him. It’s only then that he realizes there’s music playing, and even more amazing, it’s music he knows. “Is that the _Beatles_?”

“Yes,” Lukas says. He’s leaning back in his chair, looking relaxed for once. “Their newest album, I believe.”

Clint moves to stand in front of the desk, automatically stepping to attention. “I thought they were banned here.”

“They are. I happen to know the right people.” He leans forward. “You can get many things done if you know the right people.”

They lock eyes. Clint fights back a shudder. Lukas hasn’t tortured him in weeks, but every time they’re together, Clint can feel the phantom bite of a cane slicing into delicate flesh. He steels himself and waits.

“Tell me what you know about Hank Pym.”

“Not a lot,” Clint says. His throat is dry. “I’ve met him a few times. He hangs around SHIELD. Helps out with the projects. Nice guy.”

“Is that all,” Lukas says. His face is friendly, but his eyes are stone cold.

“I already told you everything else,” Clint says, a little desperately. “I only knew him sixty years from now. We weren’t great friends or anything. We didn’t talk about his past. I don’t know what he’s doing _now_.”

Lukas nods. “We’ve been hearing some interesting news recently. Whispers about Pym, and in particular, his work with a certain type of particle.” He smiles slightly. The effect is chilling. “What do you know about that?”

“Pym particles? We used them to time travel,” Clint says. “Stark designed travel suits and built the particles into them.”

“And this would be Anthony Stark, yes? Howard’s son.”

“Yes.”

“How were the particles involved?”

“I don’t know.” Lukas looks irritated, and Clint hurries to add, “They allow the person to go…” He struggles for the right Russian, then just gives up and finishes in English. “It lets you go subatomic. You shrink down really, really tiny, and then you go into this…place. They called it the Quantum Realm.”

He’s been speaking in other languages for so long that the words feel odd in his mouth. He cringes subconsciously, half-expecting Elizaveta to pop out of somewhere and slap him for using the wrong language.

The irritation changes to thoughtfulness. “How are these particles made?”

Clint switches back. “I don’t think he made them. I think he found them.”

“Hank Pym found them?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

Clint shrugs. “You’d have to ask him. Or wait sixty years and ask SHIELD, I guess.”

Lukas seems surprised by this. “SHIELD does not know?”

“Pym was worried about his work,” Clint says. “And people like you, stealing it. He kept it all secret until after.”

Lukas is quiet as he absorbs this information. Clint takes a deep breath and listens to the quiet strains of Paul McCartney.

_Yesterday…all my troubles seemed so far away_

_Now it looks as though they’re here to stay_

_Oh I believe in yesterday_

A tear slips from his eye and he hastily wipes it away. Lukas doesn’t seem to notice, lost in thought as he is. Clint wipes another tear away and clenches his fists at his side to get himself under control. _Strong. Be strong._

Finally, the other man seems to remember that he’s there. “You may go,” he says, waving a hand dismissively. “I will summon you if I have more questions.”

“Yes, sir,” Clint says. He leaves quickly, despite the small part of him that’s desperate to stay and keep listening. It’s been so long since he’s heard music, and to hear something that he _recognizes_ …

Nervous Guy has a friend now, a tall man with dark hair and a surly expression. They’re mid-conversation when he steps out of the office, and their postures instantly tense. Clint looks from one to the other, then says, “Uh…hi?”

Surly points his gun at him. “Walk.”

As soon as he complies, they relax a little and go back to their conversation. They’re speaking Bulgarian, which Clint is passingly familiar with. It’s close enough to Russian that he understands most of what they’re saying—which isn’t much. Clint tunes it out, still hearing the quiet melody in his head.

_Suddenly I’m not half the man I used to be_

_There’s a shadow hanging over me_

_Oh yesterday came suddenly_

The aptness of the lyrics makes him want to laugh. Or possibly cry again. He’s not sure.

Behind him, the conversation changes. Clint tunes back in in time to catch Surly muttering something about, “…blew up the entire base.”

_What?_

“What?” Nervous Guy echoes.

“The one in Germany, too.”

“Blown up?”

“Boom.”

“Why?”

“No one knows. I heard she’s looking for something.” Surly prods Clint to turn, then continues. “The question is how is she getting in?”

“Somebody is helping her,” Nervous Guy says. “Has to be.”

Surly grunts. “However she’s doing it, she’s good.”

“Do you think she’ll come here?”

This earns a derisive snort. “This is a black base, idiot. No one knows we exist.”

“I suppose.” He doesn’t sound convinced, but he doesn’t offer anything else. A tense silence descends over the odd group. Then, “What is she looking for?”

Surly grunts again. “Weapons, probably.”

“Oh.” Nervous Guy’s tone clearly shows what he thinks of that.

“They think she’s using some kind of nerve gas too.”

“Why?”

“People are hallucinating. Two eyewitnesses say she was glowing red during one of the attacks. Like moving lights around her.”

Hope is a fragile thing, Clint thinks. Like a hummingbird, fluttering in his chest. Small and vulnerable and easily crushed. He wants to turn around and demand answers, demand clarification, but he makes himself stay quiet. Makes himself keep walking.

“People are so fucking gullible,” Nervous Guy says. “They’ll believe anything.”

“Probably just got hit too hard in the head.”

They make another turn, and suddenly Clint realizes he doesn’t know where they’re going. This isn’t the way to the gym. His ever-present anxiety starts to rear its ugly head, and he slows. “Hey, where—?”

Surly shoves him between the shoulder blades. “Shut up and walk.”

“I just—“

“Shut up and walk!” Another shove, followed by the touch of a gun. Clint shuts up and walks.

They escort him through multiple hallways to a large set of double doors. He’s starting to get Overlook Hotel vibes from this whole base; it feels way too big to be properly contained in the walls around him. _But you’ve also only been in one little corner of it, and you don’t even know where that corner is._ Could be underground for all he knows. He hasn’t seen a window in weeks.

Nervous Guy pushes one of the doors open, and leads him onto an catwalk in a large room, almost football field sized. It’s a hangar bay, although it’s mostly empty except for some jeeps and some smaller jets on the far side. Mikhail is examining the wing of one of them while having an intense discussion with a man in a dark blue jumpsuit. He waves them over.

“You know, I got it from here,” Clint says to Surly as they start down the stairs. “You can probably go.”

Surly shoves him again. “Shut up an—“

“And walk, yeah. Fine.”

Mikhail dismisses the man in the jumpsuit and walks over to meet them. Surly and Nervous Guy salute, which he returns, and then says, “You may go, gentlemen. Thank you for your assistance.”

“Bye kids,” Clint says to them. Surly scowls, but turns on his heel and follows his buddy back out the door.

Mikhail fixes his gaze on Clint, then, and he has a sudden urge to kneel. He stands at attention instead. “Sir.”

“Clint.”

Clint looks at the jet, then back at Mikhail. The question is on the tip of his tongue, but he holds it back. Waits for permission to speak.

Mikhail crosses his arms. “How is your training going?”

“Fine, sir.”

“No…distractions?”

He thinks about yesterday, about how Elizaveta’s body felt against his, and his face heats a little. “What qualifies as a distraction?”

“I think you know.” Mikhail doesn’t look angry, just serious. “Well?”

They hold each other’s gazes for a moment, like a game of chicken. _Who will break first?_

Clint does. “We, uh…had sex,” he admits. “It was my fault. And then…” he trails off, thinking about the destruction in his room. “I’m sorry.”

Unexpectedly, Mikhail laughs. “For what?”

“For…” He stops. He doesn’t know how much Mikhail knows about what happened, or about his little _incident_ afterwards. The camera is still in his room, but it doesn’t record, just monitors. He might be in the clear with that if no one was actually looking at the time. He can come up with a plausible excuse for the broken items.

He gambles on it. “For sleeping with her?”

“Did you consent to it?”

“Yeah.” He squashes the guilt in his chest. “Yeah. I wanted it. We both did.”

“Then there is no problem. You are only human, Clint. I do not expect you to remain celibate. But I do expect you to find better times and better places than in the middle of the gym, during your training. Am I understood?”

“I—yes. Yes, sir.”

“Good. Come.”

They walk over to the jet, Clint still reeling a little bit from the conversation. He’d expected to be punished, he realizes. Considering how pissed Mikhail had gotten the last time he’d—

_—that wasn’t sex—_

_—that was raDON’T SAY IT—_

_—you didn’t want it—_

_—did you really want her—_

He winces and shakes his head. It’s too much to deal with. _Not right now._

“You were a pilot,” Mikhail is saying, and he forces himself to check back in to the conversation.

“Well, I can fly anything,” he says. “But I wasn’t specifically trained as pilot. I just…picked it up.”

He’d learned from SHIELD, first, and then Natasha. Like so many other things.

Mikhail gestures to the jet. “Can you fly this?”

Clint looks at it. “Probably.” It’s similar to a Quinjet, which means it’s probably a stolen SHIELD design. “I’d have to see the inside.”

Mikhail gestures. “Go ahead.”

With some trepidation, he walks around and up the ramp to the interior. It basically is a Quinjet. It’s got the same layout and everything. He’s half convinced that if he closes his eyes, he’ll see Thor or Tony walking around and making jokes.

_Stop it._

He checks out the cockpit, then goes back out to Mikhail. “I can fly it.”

“Good. I want you to.”

Clint stares at him. “I… _what_?”

“You will be flying,” Mikhail repeats. “I have a team that needs transport, and so I need a pilot.”

Clint is still staring. “You want me to fly this.”

“That is what I said.”

He keeps staring. “ _Me_.”

“Yes. You.”

It’s a test, it has to be. Or there’s something he’s missing. Something he needs to do or say, something he got wrong before, why would Mikhail just _let_ him fly this, it’s got to be a trap—

He clamps down hard on the panic attack threatening to overwhelm him, and looks up at the jet. “Why?”

Mikhail raises an eyebrow. “Are you questioning my orders?”

 _Fuck_. “No, sir.”

Mikhail lets him squirm for a second, then relents. “You are making good progress in your training. You are cooperating with Lukas and behaving well for me. I never intended to keep you under a rock, Clint. I told you from the start that this was the goal.”

“Yes, sir.” Then before he can stop himself, he blurts out, “Aren’t you afraid I’m going to take it and run?”

He just looks at Clint, stoic as ever. “Are you planning to do that?”

“No.”

“Then I do not have anything to worry about, do I?”

Clint looks at the jet, then back at Mikhail. “I…guess not, sir.”

Mikhail studies him for a long moment, then quietly says, “What happened the last time you tried to leave, Clint?”

Clint fixes his eyes on the man’s shoes. “You caught me,” he whispers.

“You failed,” Mikhail corrects. “Say it.”

“I failed.”

“And the time before that?”

“I failed.”

“Twice,” Mikhail says. “Twice you have tried to fly from me, and twice you have failed. Do you really think a third time would be advisable?”

“No, sir.”

“We will of course take precautionary measures,” Mikhail says. “But I want you to consider this.” He steps closer, and his voice takes on a dangerous edge. “I am a patient man, Clint Barton. I have been lenient with you because I knew you needed time to adjust. But I have my own limits, and if you exceed them, there will be severe consequences.” He reaches out and tilts Clint’s chin up until their eyes meet. “If you disobey me, I will take you back downstairs, lock you in the dark, and I will leave you there. Forever.”

Terror courses through Clint, stealing his breath and his strength and he falls to his knees, hands twisting in the fabric of Mikhail’s shirt. “Please don’t,” he whispers, feeling tears sting his eyes. “Oh God, please don’t do that to me, I won’t do anything stupid, I won’t, please don’t do that, please…”

Mikhail gently puts a hand on his head, quieting his begging. “I believe you, Clint. I know you will make the right choices.” He tugs on Clint’s arm.

Clint gets to his feet unsteadily, feeling drained and a little bit embarrassed. He can’t bring himself to meet Mikhail’s eyes, but the other man doesn’t seem to mind. He puts a hand on Clint’s shoulder. “Come, _ptichka_. We have details to discuss.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2500 words to brighten your quarantine days! Hope you're all staying healthy out there. Wash your hands, maintain appropriate social distance, don't panic buy, and remember to breathe. One way or another, we're all going to get through this.


	40. Chapter 39

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He feels like he’s got pieces of a puzzle, but he doesn’t know where they go or what the picture is supposed to look like. A HYDRA base in or around Berlin. Other bases being destroyed by someone looking for someone. Hallucinations of a glowing girl. Strange not-missions to drop off teams of soldiers in meadows. It makes his head hurt. There’s something he’s missing.

_Precautionary measures_ is apparently Mikhail-speak for “knock you out with special drugs and implant a tracker in one of your bones.” They’re not telling him which one and there’s no scar to indicate, but he suspects from the general soreness that it’s in his left hip. He feels like he should be horrified about this, but it’s hard to summon up the energy. He’s already been genetically modified without consent, what’s a tracker compared to that?

Once he’s fully awake, they give him something to eat and his very own green HYDRA uniform, which blessedly comes with underwear, socks, and boots. Clint almost cries when he laces them up. He’s still very much a prisoner, but now he almost looks like a person.

His mission, as Mikhail refers to it, is to fly a select group of soldiers somewhere and drop them off. He’s given a map, then allowed to sit in the cockpit of the jet and familiarize himself with the controls. Mikhail stands just over his shoulder, blocking his view of the soldiers as they make preparations in the back.

His co-pilot is Jan, an older man with a stern face and a sterner mustache. He greets Mikhail by name and converses quickly in a strange mixture of Czech and Polish, then seats himself on the left-hand side. “Who is the little boy?” he asks, and it takes a second for Clint to realize he’s talking about him.

“This is Clint Barton,” Mikhail says. “He is flying with you.”

“Hmph.” Jan looks over at Clint, and in heavily accented English says, “You know to fly, little boy?”

Clint bristles a little, but Mikhail puts a warning hand on his shoulder. “Yes, he can fly,” he says. “Do not antagonize him, Jan. He is working for me today.”

Jan rolls his eyes, but starts working on pre-flight checks. Clint looks over his shoulder at Mikhail, who just gives a loose shrug. “He is…different.”

“Uh-huh.” Clint rolls up the map.

“I must brief the men,” Mikhail says. “Do you have any further questions about the mission?”

“No sir.”

“Good. Then I will leave you to Jan.” He squeezes Clint’s shoulder. “Do not forget our earlier discussion.”

“I won’t, sir,” Clint says. And he won’t. He has no plans to do anything except what he’s been told. Actions have consequences, and what’s been promised is too big to gamble on.

“Good luck,” Mikhail says, and he leaves.

Clint looks over at Jan. These jets can be flown by one person; it’s not strictly necessary to have a co-pilot. And on a simple run like this, the danger of being shot down is almost nil. Jan is a babysitter for him—which is probably why he looks so irritated as he pokes at various buttons and switches.

“I can—“ Clint starts, but Jan holds up a hand and cuts him off. “Okay, then.”

Out in the hangar, Mikhail finishes his briefing. The team of six men shoulder their packs and start walking towards the jet.

“Here are rules,” Jan says, still in English, as he starts warming the engines. “I am boss. You sit quiet. I do work. You touch nothing. Get?”

“Fine by me,” Clint replies in Polish, letting irritation into his voice. “Just make sure you pull your head out of your ass before we start flying. I’d hate to crash into something.”

There’s a moment of silence between them, and then Jan’s shoulders start shaking. Clint leans forward, half-concerned it’s a seizure until he realizes the man is laughing.

“You are brave,” Jan finally says, switching to Polish as well. He chuckles again and stabs a stubby finger in Clint’s direction. “I can see why you have survived my friend so well.”

Clint doesn’t feel brave. He feels like a coward. If he was brave, he’d fly this jet straight to SHIELD, tracker or no tracker. Instead he’s going to do exactly what he’s been told. It feels like being under Loki’s thumb again, except this time he’s not screaming inside a blue cage in his mind. He’s here, and present, and making his own choices.

They fold up the jet ramp. Jan hits one more switch, and above them, the hangar ceiling starts to open.

Sunlight. It’s intense, and beautiful, and it spills through the windshield and across his skin like a fire. Clint leans forward without really thinking about it, seeking the warmth. Jan gives him a sideways look but says nothing, just gently nudges the controls until the jet starts lifting up.

They fly for several hours. Their course doesn’t require much correction, and Jan doesn’t let him do much anyway, so Clint spends most of it drinking in the landscape. He hasn’t been outside since he tried to climb the fence, and it was dark and raining then. Today is a blue-sky day, not a cloud in sight. Perfect flying weather. Good ground visibility too. He gets a little thrill of excitement when he sees what looks like a long grey snake stretching out below them. It’s the Berlin Wall, of course. He’s never seen it except in pictures; he was only six when it came down.

He wishes he’d had some time to explore before HYDRA had nabbed him. It would be fascinating to see all this history in person.

Their landing coordinates bring them to a large, empty meadow surrounded by trees. Jan begrudgingly allows Clint to assist in putting the jet on the ground. Then he lowers the ramp, and in the back, all the soldiers gather their equipment and run over to a waiting transport truck.

Clint waits for Jan to fold the ramp back up so they can go, but the other man hesitates with his hand over the control. Then he says, “Get up.”

“What?”

Jan undoes his own harness, then reaches over and unsnaps Clint’s. “Get up.”

Clint gets up and follows him into the back, then down the ramp. He squints into the brightness and looks over at Jan. “What are we doing?”

“Examining the jet,” Jan grunts, leaning against the ramp support in the shade. He pulls a carton of cigarettes from his pocket and lights one. “Go. Examine it.”

“What am I looking for, exactly?”

He waves vaguely. “Bullet holes. Birds. I don’t care. You have ten minutes.”

Clint doesn’t really get it—why does he need ten minutes to make a thirty second circle of the jet?—but then he steps into the sunlight, and his whole body practically melts with the warmth. He closes his eyes, letting the heat soak into his bones. It’s the most amazing thing he’s ever felt. He doesn’t care if this is a trap, or a test, or something else they’ve cooked up. He’ll take whatever they want to give him if it means he gets to feel the sun.

After a few minutes, he opens his eyes and slowly walks around the jet, ostensibly looking for birds or bullets holes. He finds neither, of course, but it does give him a chance to check out the design and mentally compare it to SHIELD’s. It’s smaller, and a little more clunky, but definitely similar. Biggest difference is there’s only three engines, not five. _Suppose that makes it a Tri-jet instead of a Quinjet_. Feeling the press of time, he rounds the other side and moves back into view of the ramp.

Jan is gone.

Clint turns, looking for him, but all he sees is a sunlit meadow and trees waving. In the distance, what might be the smudge of a city outline. No sign of anything else except him and the jet.

“Jan?” he calls. “You out there?”

No answer.

He tries again, louder. “Jan!”

Nothing.

He’s alone.

It’s an odd feeling. He’s never been truly alone since getting here. He gets escorted everywhere in the base; he’s constantly under watch. Even in his cell, he’s always monitored. Now he’s by himself.

And he has no idea what to do.

Should he wait? Should he go? He’s not entirely sure when they’re supposed to be back; Mikhail never gave him a timeframe. He’d assumed they were supposed to drop the soldiers and leave right away.

_Is this a test?_

It has to be. It has to be. They think he’s going to take the jet and run, and then they’ll find him, and Mikhail will do exactly what he promised to do and Clint will die in the dark by himself and—

“Barton.”

He whirls. Jan is walking up to the jet, cigarette still hanging from his mouth. He pauses when he sees Clint’s face. “You good?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, putting every effort into controlling his voice. “Where…where were you?”

He jerks a finger towards the woods. “Had to piss.”

“Oh.”

Jan looks up at the jet. “Find any birds?”

“No.”

He puffs on his cigarette. “Look again.”

Clint nods and walks around the jet, collapsing against it as soon as he’s out of sight. “Christ,” he mutters, rubbing his hands through his hair. “Get a grip, man.”

It takes some time, but eventually his breathing levels out. He stands up and puts his hand against the wam metal of the jet, letting it ground him in reality. _You’re here. You’re okay._

He walks around to the front. No birds, of course, but he kind of suspects that it’s really just Jan’s way of letting him have a few minutes to himself. Park the jet, drop off the cargo, take a moment to relax. He’s done the same on countless trips. Sometimes the in-between moments were the only time he and Nat got to breathe. On one brutally long mission they’d faked a breakdown in the engine just to get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Or this is a test and Jan is waiting to see if he’ll run. Either option is likely.

Clint finishes the circle and comes up on Jan’s other side. The older man drops his cigarette in the grass and stomps it out. “Ready?”

“Yeah.”

They get back in the air. Clint stares at the horizon, towards the setting sun, and tries to lull himself into a sense of peace that he doesn’t really feel.

“I am surprised,” Jan says after almost an hour.

Clint glances at him. “About what?”

“You stayed.”

Clint sets his jaw. _So it was a test._ “I told him I wouldn’t run.”

Jan nods knowingly. “Mikhail can be persuasive.”

“That’s one word for it,” Clint mutters.

“He is good at what he does,” Jan says. “He understands people very well. It has always been a talent of his.”

“How long have you known him?”

“Years.” Jan rubs his chin and looks thoughtful. “I knew him even before he became Mikhail.”

_Well, that’s fucking cryptic._ Clint sighs and stares into the distance again.

Then he squints, and looks a little harder. There’s a smudge of smoke in the distance, visible but scattered in the sunset glow. Something is on fire, or was and is still smouldering. “What’s that?” he asks, pointing at it.

“Nothing you should concern yourself with,” Jan says. The way he says it is offhand, but his body language is tenser than it was a second ago. He glances towards Clint, then looks away. Forced nonchalance.

_You know exactly what that is. And you don’t want to tell me._

He thinks about the conversation he overheard earlier.

_“…blew up the entire base.”_

_“What?”_

_“The one in Germany, too.”_

_“Blown up?”_

_“Boom.”_

_“Why?”_

_“No one knows. I heard she’s looking for something.”_

Clint unrolls the map he’d tucked away earlier. There are no towns marked on it, just landmarks and a set of coordinates. Mikhail did that on purpose, he’d said, in case the map “fell into enemy hands.” Probably a lie, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need towns and cities; he’s seen enough maps of Germany to last a lifetime.

They’d flown west when leaving, and over the wall, which meant they’d taken off from somewhere in East Germany—Berlin being the most likely suspect, given how quickly the wall had made an appearance. Straight line of travel for about three hours so they couldn’t have gotten much further than Hanover. That was probably the city he’d seen from the ground.

Clint rolls the map up again. He feels like he’s got pieces of a puzzle, but he doesn’t know where they go or what the picture is supposed to look like. A HYDRA base in or around Berlin. Other bases being destroyed by someone looking for something. Smoke in the sky. Strange not-missions to drop off teams of soldiers in meadows. It makes his head hurt. There’s something he’s missing. _Or something you don’t want to think about._

Loki’s voice is insidious in his ear. _It’s not your job to put it together, Hawkeye. It’s your job to do as ordered._

“I _am_ doing that,” Clint mutters. “So fuck off.”

“What?” Jan asks.

“Nothing.” Clint adjusts the jet slightly, countering for the wind that’s come up. “Do you know why he’s doing this?”

“Why who is doing what?”

“Mikhail. Sending me on a mission. I don’t—is this a test?”

“Everything is a test,” Jan says.

“Are you part of it?”

He shrugs. “Mikhail asked me for a favor. I agreed.”

“What did he want?”

Jan doesn’t answer, but there’s a faint look of amusement on his face. Clint clamps down on the rest of his questions and goes back to watching the landscape.

They finally cross the wall again, and Jan radios into the base before starting their descent. Clint nudges the jet downward, half-relieved and half-afraid to be returning home. He’s still not sure if he’s passed this test or not.

_At least you got to see the sun._

He closes his eyes for a second, remembering the warmth on his skin. Then he tucks the memory away to savor later. He’ll need it.

The jet lands back into the hangar. As soon as it touches down, the doors overhead start to close. Clint watches them slam together and does his best not to think about coffins.

“That was good,” Jan says, releasing his harness. He claps Clint on the shoulder. “Up. Let’s go.”

Mikhail is waiting for them on the catwalk, along with Lukas and a trio of important-looking men in three-piece suits. As soon as he and Jan emerge from the jet, Mikhail turns and says something to the trio, who whisper furiously amongst themselves.

Mikhail comes down the stairs. Jan greets him, and they have another quick Polish/Czech exchange that Clint has trouble following precisely. He looks up at Lukas instead, wondering who the trio of suits are and why they’re watching him.

“Thank you, my friend,” Mikhail finally says, offering a hand.

Jan shakes it, then extends his own to Clint. “Good work,” he says as Clint takes it. Then he ambles up towards the group, pulling the cigarettes out of his pocket as he goes.

“That is a high compliment,” Mikhail murmurs to him. “He likes you.”

“Oh yay,” Clint says. “I made a friend.”

Mikhail laughs and puts a hand on his shoulder. “I am pleased with you. You did well today.”

There’s a light feeling in his chest, and Clint has to fight to keep the grin off his face. Mikhail is happy with him. He passed the test. He’s okay.

“Who’s up there?” he asks, nodding slightly towards the group on the catwalk.

“No one you need concern yourself with,” Mikhail says. “Come. I would imagine you are hungry.”

Clint trails him towards the hangar door, looking over his shoulder just once to catch Jan and Lukas talking with the trio of suits. They’re all looking at him. Lukas is smiling, the burning tip of a cigarette held loosely between his fingers.

He shudders and follows Mikhail. It’s nothing he needs to concern himself with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow nobody gets beat up or psychologically tortured in this chapter look at me being so nice to him
> 
> This update is brought to you by Coronavirus and quarantine. Coronavirus is a seriously mutated up viral infection bitch that has the potential to actually kill you. Please follow social distancing rules, stay at home, and don't be an asshole. From all of us immunocompromised people, we thank you.


	41. Chapter 40

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Mikhail,” Lukas says, and he returns his attention to the map.
> 
> “You want to send Barton and the Soldier in together,” he says. “To kill the girl.”
> 
> “It would be a good test,” Lukas says. “If he succeeds, you will know where his heart lies.”

Mikhail drums his fingers on his desk and stares at the proposal in front of him. “No,” he finally says after a long moment of consideration. He pushes the paper back across the desk.“No. He is not ready.”

“We need them for The Project,” Lukas says. “And this is not one the Soldier can do alone.”

“He has only been out a few times since the first test.”

“And he keeps coming back. Do you doubt your work?”

“Of course not,” Mikhail snaps. “But did you send the Soldier back into the lion’s den so early in the game?”

Lukas considers this. “No,” he finally admits. “I did not.”

“He is not ready,” Mikhail says again. “I need to see how he reacts to agents in the field first. He was very loyal to SHIELD before coming here.”

“You have worked with him for almost a year,” Lukas says. “Surely you have broken that bond by now.”

“Now he is loyal to _me_ ,” Mikhail says. “There is a difference.” He locks eyes with Lukas. “You of all people should understand that.”

Lukas looks thoughtful. “Yes. I suppose that is true.” He smiles. “When did my student become so wise?”

“I simply remember what it is like to be him,” Mikhail says. “He will work for us. He just needs more time.”

“I will get you more time.” Lukas starts to stand up, then pauses. “Although…”

Mikhail leans back in his chair. “Although?”

“I have an idea,” Lukas says. “I need to make a phone call. Privately,” he adds when Mikhail shows no signs of moving.

Mikhail inwardly rolls his eyes and gets up. “I will attend to other matters,” he says.

“Thank you.”

Slightly annoyed about being kicked out of his own office, Mikhail closes the door behind himself and walks to the shooting range.

He arrives to find Clint in a heated argument with the weapons instructor. He’s holding a bow loosely in one hand, a handful of arrows in the other, and he looks extremely exasperated. In the corner of the room is Elizaveta, who is leaning against the wall and smirking.

Mikhail joins her, noting proudly that the conversation is flowing between several different languages, and Clint isn’t missing a beat in any of them.

“I _like_ him,” Eliza says to Mikhail as soon as he’s within earshot. “He’s smart. And he learns fast. I never have to teach him the same thing twice.” She keeps her eyes on the arguing pair, but a knowing smile curves her mouth.

“I take it you are still sleeping with him,” Mikhail says. “Interesting. I never figured you for the sentimental type.”

She shrugs. “He’s got pretty eyes and he’s good with his hands. Might as well have him while I can.”

Clint slams the arrows on a nearby table and raises his voice even more, shouting over the instructor. Mikhail blinks. “That is…unusual behavior.”

“No it’s not,” Eliza says. “He’s been like this.”

“Like what?”

She shrugs. “Volatile. Angry. He doesn’t show _you_ , but he’s been having a hard time hiding it from everyone else.” She looks at him. “He broke the mirror in his room. And a tray.”

“I heard about it.”

“He tried to play it off, but I think he did both on purpose.” Eliza bites her lip, then says, “He probably feels like he’s losing control. Or losing himself.”

Mikhail nods. “It is only to be expected. I was like that too.” He remembers it vividly, despite being so long ago. That amount of helpless rage is not easily forgotten. “We are on the right track with him. He just needs to find a new rhythm. It is important that we provide support, not just discipline.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” she says. The corner of her mouth quirks up. “Makes for good sex, though.”

“Spare me,” Mikhail says dryly. “What are they yelling about?”

“That? Pissing contest, mostly,” she says. “Boys being boys.”

“Ah. How is he doing today?”

“Quite well. He’s hit everything we’ve asked him to. Haven’t had to threaten him or anything.”

“ _All_ the targets?”

She points to the three bodies at the far end of the range, each with an arrow through the heart.

“Any trouble?”

“He asked what they’d done. I asked him if it mattered, and after a moment he said ‘No, I guess not.’ Then he shot them.”

Mikhail sighs again. It’s certainly an improvement from the last time, but still not perfect.

She brushes her hair out of her face. “Why are you here? I thought you had a meeting with Lukas.”

“I did.”

She looks at his expression. “He made you leave your office again?”

“He has his own,” Mikhail growls. “Why he insists on using _my_ phone…”

She grins. “Because he knows it annoys you.”

“I should go use his record player,” Mikhail says. “And see what he thinks about that.”

“Tell me when you do so I can plan your funeral.”

Clint snarls something extremely impolite, then turns around. The moment he sees Mikhail, his eyes go wide and a look of fear flashes across his face. He sets the bow carefully on a stand, then stands at attention, sparing the now-smirking instructor a nervous glance.

“Eliza tells me you are doing well,” Mikhail says, pushing away from the wall and walking over. “So what is this about?”

“He’s lying to me,” the instructor says. Mikhail doesn’t remember his name. Clint looks like he’s visibly restraining himself from punching the man.

“About what?”

“He says he shot a man through the eye at three-hundred meters while free-falling from a plane. He is clearly lying.”

“Is that so?” Mikhail looks at Clint. “Are you lying?”

“No sir,” he says.

“Of course you are,” the instructor says. “That kind of accuracy is impossible!”

“I can hit anything,” Clint snaps. “Watch me.”

“He is very good,” Mikhail says to the instructor. “I have personally seen him hit moving targets while running.”

“Running and free falling are very different,” the instructor says. He’s all puffed up, like he expects Mikhail to agree with him and punish Clint for lying.

Clint mutters something that sounds a lot like “go fuck yourself.” Mikhail clears his throat to stop himself from laughing. “I would not dismiss his talents,” he says to the instructor. “He is capable of far more than you are.”

The instructor sputters a little. “But he—“

“You may leave,” Mikhail says to him. “Now.”

Fuming, the instructor salutes and stalks away. Mikhail focuses his attention on Clint, who is nervously shifting his weight.

“I am not angry,” Mikhail says, and watches as the tension immediately melts from Clint’s shoulders. “He is…”

“An asshole?” Clint supplies.

“Yes,” Mikhail agrees. “How did the argument start?”

Clint waves at the field. “I asked if he had moving targets. These are easy. Back in the tower, Stark had this great set-up for me that was basically a giant obstacle course target gallery. It was totally—“ He cuts himself off, and a pained look passes over his face. “Anyway. He said I couldn’t hit a moving target, and I said I once hit a guy while free-falling from a plane. He didn’t believe me.”

“Did you really?” He files away the mention of Stark for later.

“Yeah. The three-hundred meters thing might be a little off but it’s not like I had a measuring tape.” He pauses, then adds, “I got in a lot of trouble for that though. Wasn’t supposed to jump out.”

“Why did you?”

“Only way I could get a clear shot.”

“And they reprimanded you for that?” Mikhail shakes his head. “Ingenuity should be rewarded, not rebuked.” He smiles. “Quick thinking is an invaluable skill. As is bravery.”

Clint ducks his head a little, but not before Mikhail can see the pride on his face. _Praise-starved,_ he thinks again. He wonders if anyone at SHIELD ever figured that out, or if they merely saw his brilliance as insubordination and treated it accordingly.

He looks over towards the bodies and the arrow-filled targets. “So you do not like the range?”

“I’m not complaining,” Clint says quickly, glancing at the bow. “Please don’t take it the wrong way or anything. I’m just…”

“Bored,” Mikhail says. “I understand. There is a field training course outside. I suppose we could set up targets and let you run there. I have been meaning to do so anyway.”

Clint tries to maintain a polite interest, but he is so very easy to read. His excitement practically bleeds through his skin. “I would like that, sir.”

“I will arrange it.”

“Thank you.”

Elizaveta strolls over. “Time’s up, Barton,” she says. “We have other things to do.”

Clint looks at Mikhail. “Go,” Mikhail says. “I also have other things to do.” Like getting his office back, to start with.

It’s actually empty when he returns, something that both pleases and irritates Mikhail. He runs a practiced eye over the interior, noting the few things slightly out of place. He’ll have to go through it all later. This is the reason he doesn’t keep anything private in here.

Lukas is in his own office now, of course. Mikhail knocks on the door, then enters without waiting for permission. “How was your phone call?”

“Productive,” Lukas says absently, moving aside some papers to spread a map of Berlin on his desk. “How is your agent?”

“Fine. I think I will take him outside tomorrow. Set up some targets on the running course.”

Lukas nods. “That would be good for him.”

“I think so. What are you doing?”

No answer. Lukas runs his finger over the map, glancing at a set of coordinates on another piece of paper. Then he takes a marker and makes a circle over a small section of Berlin. “There,” he mutters. “She’s there.”

“Who is where?”

“Do you still want to test your agent?”

“What?”

The other man looks up. “Against other agents. Do you still want to test him?”

“Of course I do.”

“Good. I want to see how he works with the Soldier. And I have an opportunity for both of those things to happen.” He points at the coordinates. “You have heard of the attacks on our bases, I assume.”

“Yes.”

“You know the truth about them?”

“Yes.”

“She cannot be allowed to continue,” Lukas says.

“I am aware of that.”

“Then we will stop her.” He points at the map. “Intelligence puts her and her companion here. It is an old SHIELD safe-house, just over the Wall.”

Mikhail looks at the map. “I thought she was acting independent of SHIELD.”

“I suspect they are aiding her, if not directly assisting. She might not be from this time, but SHIELD takes care of their own.” He looks up at Mikhail and with a ghost of a smile adds, “Well. _Usually_.”

Mikhail clenches a fist. “Stop that, Lukas.”

Lukas chuckles. “Apologies, my friend. Seeing you work with your agent has brought back memories.”

 _Not fond ones,_ Mikhail thinks, trying to shake off the sudden coldness in him, the hours that Lukas had spent whispering in his ear like a snake. _They declared you dead, little wolf. No one is coming for you. No one cares you are here. You are mine._

He had denied it with such conviction, back then. Had held so tightly to a regime that cared nothing for him. Lukas had been right in the end. No one had come for him. No one wanted him.

He understood that, eventually. But knowing the truth hadn’t made it hurt less.

“Mikhail,” Lukas says, and he returns his attention to the map.

“You want to send Barton and the Soldier in together,” he says. “To kill the girl.”

“It would be a good test,” Lukas says. “If he succeeds, you will know where his heart lies.”

“And if he doesn’t,” Mikhail says carefully, “then he is either dead or gone.”

“I thought you trusted your work.”

“I do,” Mikhail says. “But I fail to see how this is not the lion’s den again. You have read the reports. They were close friends. That is a big task to ask of him so soon.”

“He does not have to engage directly with her. The Soldier can do the final part. But your agent can help secure the perimeter from security details. He will have multiple chances to engage with SHIELD that way. He guards the outside, the Soldier takes down the girl, and then we both have our problems solved.”

_Our problems?_

Lukas waits for his answer, the picture of relaxation and nonchalance. But Mikhail knows him too well for that.

“What did they threaten you with?” he asks, thinking about the conversation he’d interrupted when Clint returned from that first mission. He hadn’t recognized any of the three men, but he’d known they were powerful the moment he laid eyes on them. Some people just exude authority with every motion.

Lukas shakes his head and a haunted look slips over his face. “Don’t ask.”

Mikhail looks at the map again. “Barton stays on the perimeter,” he says. “And we do not tell him what the mission purpose is. He is backup for the Soldier. That is all he needs to know.”

“Fine.” Lukas rolls up the map. “The Soldier is due back at midnight. Early reports indicate he needs minor repair. Be ready to go by 0400. We need to move quickly.”

Mikhail nods, recognizing the dismissal in the command. “I will.” He is reaching for the doorknob when behind him Lukas calls his name. He turns around.

Lukas is standing at his full height, with his arms crossed and his expression cold. He looks the same way he did when they first met, when Mikhail was trembling and chained to a wall and terrified of what was to come. The years between that moment and now suddenly seem to fade away, and that same terror floods through his veins like ice water. “No mistakes,” Lukas says. “Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Mikhail says, his mouth suddenly dry.

Lukas’s mouth slides up into a knowing smile. “Good. You may go.”

Mikhail salutes and walks out, holding himself together until he gets to his own office. As soon as the door closes behind him he falls to his knees, taking deep shuddering breaths.

He _hates_ Lukas sometimes. Hates the way the man can reduce him to a wreck with nothing more than a few words and a specific posture. He should be better than this. Should be stronger. He has his own agent to deal with now. He can’t allow himself to be taken apart by a few words.

He kneels there until he can breathe properly again, until all the memories are shoved back into their boxes and put away, until he can stand without shaking himself to pieces.

Then he straightens his uniform and goes to find Clint.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cheers from quarantine, my friends. Hope you're all staying safe.


	42. Chapter 41

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HYDRA has a time machine. If he leaves with her, his family won’t be safe. They won’t ever be safe. No matter where he runs to, Mikhail will find him. And then he’ll be punished. He will die in the darkness, his family will be dead, and it will be his fault.
> 
> But Wanda is the mission. If he steps back and lets the Soldier complete it, then she dies too, and it will be his fault. Every turn, every angle, there is nothing but death and loss and pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternating between Wanda and Clint this chapter, because they both needed to tell the story.

_SHIELD never changes_ , Wanda thinks as she runs her hand over the half-broken couch and eyes the pile of dusty books on the coffee table. In the kitchen, Anatoly bangs his head on a hanging cabinet as he searches for something to eat. “Ow.”

“Careful,” Wanda calls to him.

“I’m fine. I found…well, I don’t know what it is. It’s either mold or pudding.” There’s a pause, and then with a trace of disgust, he says, “It’s mold.”

Wanda snorts. “Why don’t I just go get us food?”

“Because it’s almost four in the morning? Nothing will be open.”

“We passed a convenience store on the way here. Sign said twenty-four hours.”

“Oh. Well then, yeah. Unless you want to eat mold.” He walks around the corner. “Do you want me to come with?”

“No, you drove the last six hours. You should rest.”

Anatoly looks like he might argue, but after a moment he slumps in exhaustion. “Okay. You’re right.”

“I’ll be right back,” she says. “It was only a few blocks. And SHIELD always keeps a security perimeter on their safe houses. You’ll be fine.”

“I’m not worried about me,” he says, but he collapses on the couch anyway, his eyes already half closed.

Wanda smiles fondly. “Sleep.”

“Yes ma’am,” he mutters.

She goes to the pile of books and skims through the titles, then picks up the John le Carré novel. _Someone has a sense of humor._ Inside the book is hollowed out, but there’s a large roll of bills held together with a rubber band. Wanda peels a few off and leaves the rest. Then she goes out, quietly closing the door as so not to wake the snoring Anatoly.

The night air is cold. Wanda shivers and pulls her hood up, half for disguise and half for warmth. She doesn’t see any patrols or police out, but there’s still no reason to attract attention if she can help it. She doesn’t want to cause any unnecessary trouble this close to their goal.

Around the corner there’s a black car. It looks inconspicuous, but Wanda has spent enough time with SHIELD to recognize a security team when she sees it. She nods at the car and keeps walking past, trying to look causal.

The trip to Helsinki had been relatively fruitful. Anatoly’s contact didn’t know anything about a shadow base, but she’d managed to get them in contact with another SHIELD agent named Redding. He’d been remarkably rude at first—calling her demeaning names and refusing to help until he could verify their security clearances.

Wanda smirks a little as she remembers the look on his face when the answer had come back.

_“You’ll just have to be patient, little lady. I called headquarters, they’ll run your name and let me know if you can be trusted. We wouldn’t be a very secure organization if we just gave out information to every pretty face, would we sweetheart?”_

_Wanda fights the urge to punch the condescending smile off his face. “Don’t,” Anatoly mutters in her ear as he pulls her to the side. “He’s not worth it.”_

_“I’ll show him a little lady,” she hisses. “I fought aliens and saved the world, I don’t need his misogynistic_ bullshit _.”_

_“If you hurt him, he won’t help us,” Anatoly says, wrapping his hand around her fist. “Can you at least wait until SHIELD calls?”_

_“Fine.”_

_An hour later, the phone rings. Redding answers it with a jovial, “Hey, Bruce, what do you got for me?” Wanda watches with satisfaction as the blood slowly drains from his face. “Are you sure?” he says, and after a moment, he whispers, “Thank you,” and hangs up the phone._

_“Was that everything you need to know?” Wanda asks sweetly._

_“Yes,” Redding chokes out, his face practically white. “I—“_

_“Good.” She punches him in the face. He topples to the floor, one hand pressed to his eye. Anatoly stifles a laugh._

_“Now, sweetheart,” she says, shaking out her hand. “Let’s talk about that shadow base.”_

He hadn’t known the location, but he’d known the name of a HYDRA agent who would. Even with SHIELD’s direct help, it had taken them several weeks to track the man down, then even more time to maneuver him to a place where they could grab and interrogate him.

The HYDRA agent hadn’t survived. But she’d gotten a location, and that was what mattered. Fourteen hours later, they’d arrived in Berlin, at the safe house that SHIELD begrudgingly let them use.

The convenience store is empty except for a bored looking teenager sitting at the cash register. She turns the page of a magazine and spares Wanda an idle glance as she walks in.

Wanda doesn’t recognize anything on the shelves. Not that that’s particularly surprising. But she manages to find some basic things, which the girl dutifully bags for her. “Anything else?” she asks, handing Wanda her change.

“No, thank you.” The girl returns to her magazine.

The clouds have shifted enough to allow moonlight through for the walk back. Wanda sticks to the shadows out of habit, but she admires the subtle glow over the city streets. She and Pietro used to sit up and watch the full moon rise from their rooms in Strucker’s facility. It was peaceful up there.

Their mother had loved the moon too. Wanda had spent so many nights curled into her mother’s embrace, listening to her hum a song while silver light shone through the window. She tries to recall the lyrics now, but they slip away into the abyss of memory. Pietro would know, she thinks, and her heart twists a little as tears spring to her eyes. She blinks them away. _This is not the time to cry._

The surveillance car is still on the corner. Wanda glances at it, then stops walking and looks again. It looks different, and she can’t put her finger on it for a moment.

Then it hits her. The windshield is gone.

They’re both dead. She can see it as soon as she gets close. They’re slumped forward, motionless, blood dripping from wounds in their heads.

Arrow wounds _._

_Clint._

Wanda drops the bag and takes off running.

Clint is dressed in black, perched on a roof, and armed with a bow and eleven arrows. He used to have fourteen, but he used three to shoot the agents in the car. One to shatter the windshield, the others for headshots. The agents had been sitting and drinking coffee. Talking with each other. Laughing about something he would never know. They hadn’t seen him coming.

He wants to tell himself it’s more humane this way. That if he hadn’t killed them, the Soldier would have, and it would have been brutal. Terrifying. They would have known. Maybe had time to call for backup, and then there would be more casualties. He wants to tell himself he’s doing the right thing.

But then he would be lying, and he is not allowed to lie.

Clint rolls the bowstring under his fingers. He can’t think about them right now. He has a job to do. It’s already taking everything he has to stay calm in the darkness. He does not have the luxury of falling apart over some moral quandary right now—a moral quandary that he shouldn’t even _have_. SHIELD left him stuck here in 1965 after _one_ rescue attempt. One. Then they abandoned him to the wolves. It’s like Mikhail said. They don’t want him. They never did.

He tells himself this until he thinks he believes it.

And then he sees _her_.

She sprints down the block, the night chill forgotten. Every shadow is a soldier, every flicker of movement a gun. The power crackles through her fingers, running up and down her arms in preparation. She needs to be ready. If Clint is here, then so is HYDRA.

It’s Wanda. Of course it is. Who else? Her red hair is streaming behind her as she runs down the street, a bag of groceries abandoned on the street. He sees it almost in slow motion, the strands illuminated in the light of the moon as she runs right past him, close enough to call her name.

_She came for me?_

Clint fixates on her face, worry and fear and _hope_ all mixing together. He wants to laugh. He wants to cry. He wants to jump off this roof and run into her arms and hold her. He wants her to take him _home_.

He does nothing. He stays where he was commanded to stay. _Actions have consequences, Agent Barton._

Wanda bursts through the broken door. “Anatoly!”

“In here,” he says. She rounds the corner into the living room and sees him sitting on the couch where she left him.

Standing behind him, pressing a gun to his head, is someone both incredibly familiar and very, very alien.

“Barnes?” she gasps, skidding to a halt. “Barnes, what are you _doing_ here?”

There’s no recognition in his eyes. No hint of the warmth that she knows. And like a puzzle piece snapping into place, she sees the whole picture.

It’s not Barnes. It’s the Winter Soldier.

Wanda blasts him backwards with a wave of power. He crashes through the wall, giving her long enough to grab Anatoly with her other hand and pull him forward. He grunts in pain as she pulls him into the wall, too panicked to really get herself under control. “Sorry,” she says, helping him to his feet.

“I’m good,” he grunts, reaching down to grab his own gun from the floor. “We need to run.”

“I can’t.” She turns to him. “The team outside was shot with arrows. Clint is here. He’s _here_ , Anatoly. I have to find him.”

He grabs her arm. “He’s not in the house. The Soldier came in alone.” There is so much fear in his eyes, but his voice is steady. “We have to get out of here. _Now_.”

Wanda lets him drag her out of the house and into the street. “He’ll be up high somewhere,” she says, spinning around and searching the rooftops. “He likes heights, he’s got a bow—“

The front door explodes off its hinges, followed immediately by a hail of gunfire. Wanda grabs Anatoly and dives to the side, scraping her face on the concrete of the sidewalk. Anatoly immediately flips over and fires back, hitting the Soldier at least twice and making him stumble. Wanda summons as much power as she can, then uses it to pull a car in front of them as a shield. Half a second later his return fire slams into it. Wanda holds onto it as long as she can, then hurls it at the Soldier. He shouts in pain as it rolls on top of him.

“You have to run,” Wanda says to Anatoly, spinning to look up again. “It’s too dangerous!”

“I’m not leaving you,” he shouts back. The fear is still there, but there’s a grim determination behind it. “The security team had a vehicle, we can—“

There’s a creaking sound, and Wanda looks over just in time to see the car flying back towards them as the Soldier pushes it off. She throws out a hand to stop it, but it’s not soon enough. The brunt of it catches Anatoly in the chest and he goes backwards, tumbling over the ground like a rag doll before coming to a stop under a streetlight.

He doesn’t move.

Wanda screams his name, but then there is a silvery hand reaching for her and a gun pointed in her face and there is no time to think. Just to react. She ducks his hand and pushes power into him, but he rolls with the momentum and comes right back up again with the gun raised. A bullet catches her in the arm, and then in the leg. Wanda grits her teeth against the scream threatening to erupt from her and extends her arm, imagining herself wrapping around the weapon and _pulling_. The Soldier grunts in surprise as it nearly tears from his grip.

She holds on like that—power swirling around her, half-kneeling, blood pouring from the gash in her head. He holds on too, fingers tightening around the slipping gun. Wanda doesn’t know how long it goes on, this battle of wills. Could be minutes. Could be years

But she starts to weaken. Starts to fade. She is already so tired and he is so strong. She knows the second he realizes his advantage, because his expression morphs into determination. He locks eyes with her and suddenly, he releases the gun.

It’s like releasing a tension cord and she’s not ready for it. It slams into her with force, knocking her to the ground. She barely has time to blink before he is _right_ there, straddling her chest with his knees pinning her wrists. They stare at each other again. There isn’t anything in his expression. No remorse, no recognition. Just cold, empty blankness. He pulls a knife out of a leg sheath and presses it to her throat. She feels it sharp against her skin with every heartbeat. He is going to kill her.

 _Clint_ , _I’m sorry,_ she thinks, and like her thoughts summoned him, he’s there.

Clint doesn’t remember climbing down from the rooftop, or running across the street. He just sees the glint of the knife in the moonlight from his perch, and then he is slamming into the Soldier with an undignified tackle. They hit the ground and roll in a painful tumble of tangled up limbs and spilled arrows.

Then he’s on his feet, facing the Soldier, the knife in his own hand. “You can’t kill her.”

The Soldier stares at him, half-crouched in the damp grass. “That is the mission.”

“She’s my friend.”

“She is the target.”

Behind him, Wanda scrambles to her feet. He looks at her. “Clint,” she says, relief flooding her voice. “ _Clint_.”

He never knew one syllable could hold so much hope.

He’s here. God, he’s here. Weeks and weeks of searching, and he is right in front of her. Close enough to touch. He’s horribly thin, and there are scars around his wrists, and his eyes are sunken and haunted—but he’s here.

Relief makes her stagger. She reaches out for him, but he twists away from her and puts himself between her and the Soldier. “You can’t kill her,” he says again, speaking perfect Russian in a low voice. “Not her. Please.”

“Move,” the Soldier says.

“You can’t.” He clenches the knife harder.

There is something like sympathy in the Soldier’s face. “If I don’t,” he says softly, “they will ask why. And I will have to tell them.”

Clint flinches hard at that. Then he looks at her.

“We can leave,” Wanda says. “Come with me, Clint. We can go home.” Her voice catches. “Laura said I had to bring you home.”

_Laura_.

His legs tremble and he drops to a knee under the weight of her name. The air seems escape from his lungs. _Laura._ He’s so close to being with her again.

Wanda stretches out her hand to him. All he has to do is take it, and this is over. He can hold his wife again. See his kids. Shoot hay bales instead of people.

 _But it won’t be over,_ that little voice whispers. _Because you told them. You told them everything._

HYDRA has a time machine. If he leaves with her, his family won’t be safe. They won’t ever be safe. No matter where he runs to, Mikhail will find him. And then he’ll be punished. He will die in the darkness, his family will be dead, and it will be his fault.

But Wanda is the mission. If he steps back and lets the Soldier complete it, then she dies too, and it will be his fault. Every turn, every angle, there is nothing but death and loss and pain.

_Actions have consequences, Agent Barton._

The unfairness of it claws at him, fills him up until he can’t breathe, then breaks loose in a fury of sound that could never be put into words.

It’s like the howl of wounded animal, primal and scared and so, so broken. It’s the worst thing Wanda has ever heard. It breaks her heart.

“Clint,” she says, and he stops, his eyes filling with tears. He looks utterly, horribly defeated.

He stands up. Drops the knife and reaches back for an arrow. Nocks it.

Then he aims it at her.

“You have to go,” Clint says. His voice is raw. “Now.”

Wanda shakes her head. “Not without you.”

“You have to,” he says again. The bowstring is tight under his fingers and his arm is trembling with the effort of holding it back. “Wanda. _Please_.”

“Why won’t you come with me?” Her voice cracks. A tear slips down her cheek. He wants to wipe it away, but he doesn’t dare relax his grip on the arrow. There is a seed of an idea blooming in his mind. A tiny, fragile hope that he might be able to save her after all.

He looses the string, and lets the arrow fly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...sorry.


	43. Chapter 42

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And there’s the truth of it, really. He gave HYDRA time travel; he handed them the keys to the kingdom with barely a fight. People are dead because of him, and now more are going to die. How could he ever go back and look his children in the eye, knowing he ruined their past and their future?

The arrow slices right along the right side of her neck, exactly where he aimed it. Wanda stumbles backward in shock, pressing a hand to the thin line of blood. “But…” she says, looking at her palm, betrayal in her voice. “I…”

Clint reaches for another arrow and she does exactly what he was hoping for—sprints away from him, up the steps and into the safe house. He moves to follow.

The Soldier puts a hand on his shoulder. “I will do it,” he says.

“No.” Clint shrugs him off. “It needs to be me.”

“She is the target. This is my mission.”

“You’re already injured. And she was my friend.” He’s shaking, but he stands his ground. He has to be the one to follow her.

They stare each other down, but after an eternity, the Soldier nods. “You have five minutes,” he says. He looks an absolute mess; there’s multiple bullet wounds, and the blood he keeps spitting out indicates there’s more going on internally. Five minutes is probably pushing it for him.

“I’ll take care of it,” Clint says, and he goes up the steps.

It’s a familiar layout, echoing all the safe houses he’s ever been in. He’s probably even been in this exact one, fifty years from now. The only things different are the decor and the technology.

Wanda is standing in the living room, red power swirling around her hands. She’s been wounded, he sees. The blood drips on the floor like a metronome, counting down the time they have left.

“Clint,” she says. Still hopeful.

“They know,” Clint says. “About the stones. About time travel. They _know_ , Wanda, and they know because of me. They’re working on their own machine and it’s only a matter of time.”

Her face is still determined. “We can fix it—“

“We _can’t_ ,” Clint says. “If I go back with you, he’ll just come after me and everything will be worse. This is the only way to keep everyone safe.”

“It’s not your job to keep everyone safe,” she says.

He laughs mirthlessly. “Yeah. It is.”

“Then let me help,” she says. “Please, Clint. We’re a team. You don’t have to do this alone.”

“What do you want me to do?” he asks, his voice bitter. “Take you back to HYDRA with me? Watch as they torture you? Or use you against me?” He clenches his fist around the bow. “You can’t protect me, Wanda, and I can’t protect you. You want to help? I need you to leave, and I need you to never come back here.”

She shakes her head, stubborn to the end. “I won’t. I told Laura I’d bring you back. I’m going to bring you back. Whatever happened here, whatever’s gone wrong…we can fix it.”

“You’re so fucking naive,” he snarls.

She looks hurt at this, and in the back of his mind, something screams at him to apologize. To just give up the fight and go with her. But the venom-filled words keep spilling out of him like a waterfall. “Not everything can be wrapped up in a pretty bow and set right, Wanda. It’s time to grow the fuck up and see how the world really is.”

“Clint,” she says, tears spilling down her cheeks. “Why are you saying this?”

“Because you’re a child,” he spits. “And you can’t see that there’s no _fixing_ anything. Not this time.”

And there’s the truth of it, really. He gave HYDRA time travel; he handed them the keys to the kingdom with barely a fight. People are _dead_ because of him, and now more are going to die. How could he ever go back and look his children in the eye, knowing he ruined their past and their future?

No. He can’t put on a new name and leave his problems behind. Not this time. He fucked up, and this is his penance. He doesn’t get to walk away.

Outside, he hears grunting as the Soldier struggles to his feet. “Time’s up.”

Wanda swallows. “Are you going to kill me?”

“We’re supposed to,” he says. “Like he said. That’s the mission. ”

The worst thing is, he feels like he should. Like Mikhail is standing behind him, telling him to make the right choices. _Complete the mission. Prove you are worth all this time I put into you, Agent Barton._

“Then do it,” Wanda says. She’s crying, but she raises her chin defiantly. “Or put down the bow and come with me. You have a choice, Clint.”

Yeah. He does. And he’s going to make it now.

Clint lowers his bow. “Where’s the trigger?”

“The what?”

“For the suit. Where is it?”

She pushes up her left sleeve. “Here.”

“Is it keyed up for SHIELD?”

“Yeah.” There’s still hope in her voice. It tears at his heart. “I have one for you too, it’s in—“

He darts forward and grabs her wrist in a tight grip. She gasps in pain. “Don’t come back,” he says, his voice low. “I don’t know if I can do this a second time.”

“I don’t understand—“

“Tell Laura I’m sorry,” he says, and hits the button before shoving her away.

The suit overlays her clothes. They meet eyes just as the helmet forms, and he nearly breaks at the pain and betrayal that he sees there.

“Clint,” she says, reaching forward, and then she’s gone.

He sucks in a ragged breath and takes a moment to get himself under control. Then he moves quickly. It's not likely Wanda left behind anything important, but he's not going to take chances.

Clint goes to the stove and throws every burner wide open. The smell is instant and overwhelming. He ignores it and rummages through the kitchen drawers until he finds a lighter, which he uses to set the tablecloth and the curtains on fire. Then he grabs his bow and gets the hell out. He'd prefer some Semtex or C-4, but hopefully this will work just as well. 

The Winter Soldier is starting up the steps just as he collects his weapon and comes down them. “You don’t want to go in there,” Clint says, walking past. “Seriously.”

“Why not?” His face is white with pain, but he follows Clint into the street.

The kitchen explodes, blowing out the glass windows and bathing the street with a brilliant light. “Because of that,” Clint says, ducking a piece of glass. He quickly gathers up their stray weapons. 

There’s a second, louder explosion, and the heat of it reaches them all the way into the street. Clint watches it with satisfaction. 

Firelight reflects in the Soldier’s dark eyes. “And the girl?”

“She’s taken care of,” Clint says roughly.

“She is dead?”

“We should get out of here before the police come. Do you need help?”

The Soldier looks like he wants to pursue the topic, but then he shakes his head and presses harder on his side. His wheezing is louder. “I am functional.”

Clint points down the street. “What about the guy that was with her?" The guy in question is still under the streetlight, but he does appear to be moving at least a little. Clint isn't sure if they should leave him alive or not. 

“Irrelevant. Mission parameters did not include secondary target or witnesses.” There’s something in his tone that begs Clint not to question it further.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

The pickup point is a mile from the burning house. Halfway there, the distant sirens grow louder, and Clint shoves the Soldier into an alleyway. They crouch behind a dumpster as the first responders go roaring by.

As soon as the last one passes, he turns to the Soldier. “I—hey. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes,” the Soldier says. He’s gasping for breath. “I…am still…functional.”

“Christ,” Clint mutters. He reaches down and yanks him up, ducking underneath his good arm for support. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”

They get about twenty steps down the street, and then the Soldier asks, “Who…is Barnes?”

Clint adjusts his arm. “Did she call you that?”

“Yes. Who…?”

“Does it matter?” he snaps. “They’re going to put you in that chair and take it from you anyway, like they take every other goddamn thing.”

Another twenty steps. Then, “Not…everything.”

Clint stops. “What?”

Speaking is clearly difficult, but the Soldier is staring at him with desperation. “Who…is…Barnes?”

“It’s you,” Clint says tiredly. “Barnes. That’s your last name.”

The Soldier stops talking after that and they make it to the car without another word. Clint deposits him in the backseat.

“What happened to him?” the driver asks, getting out.

“Don’t ask,” Clint says, shoving his bow and arrows into the other man’s hand. “Can we go now?”

The driver mutters something that sounds vaguely rude, but he takes the bow and opens the trunk. Clint gets into the backseat.

The Soldier is leaning heavily against the window, but he glances over as the door slams. He has an odd expression on his face. “What,” Clint says. He doesn’t answer.

The driver climbs back in and starts the car, then tosses a small first aid kit at Clint. “Try not to bleed on my seats,” he snaps to the Soldier, and Clint has the urge to punch him. Instead, he opens the kit and starts putting bandages on the worst of the wounds. The numbness is back, encompassing him, and it’s all too easy to sink into its warm embrace as his hands move methodically.

The car is greeted at the bunker’s gate by Lukas, Mikhail, and a group of guards. Clint and the Soldier get out as soon as it rolls to a stop. He doesn’t miss the way the Soldier’s hand drops from his side, and how he stands taller and yet more cowed under Lukas’s gaze.

“Mission report,” Lukas says sharply, looking at them both. Clint starts to answer, but the Soldier cuts him off.

“Mission success within parameters. Main target eliminated along with two SHIELD operatives. No other casualties.”

There’s no change in his expression. No fluctuation in his voice or posture that betrays the lie he just told.

“What is your status?”

“Minor injuries. I am still functional.”

“His lung is collapsing,” Clint says. “He’s having trouble breathing. She threw a car at him."

Lukas gives the Soldier a critical look. “Report to the infirmary,” he says. “Wait for me there.”

The Soldier gets even paler, if that’s possible, but he does as he’s told. A trail of blood drips behind him as he stumbles off. Two or three of the guards peel off to follow him.

“What happened?” Mikhail asks.

“The target threw a car at him,” Clint repeats, eyes on the departing figure. His voice sounds so lifeless, even to his own ears. “Also, the house exploded.”

Mikhail looks a little concerned. “Are you alright?”

“I’m functional,” Clint says, because he is so very far from _alright_. But Mikhail accepts this as an answer, and motions for Clint to follow them inside.

He had been planning to tell Mikhail the truth—that he’d sent her back and told her not to come again. He’d been prepared to face the consequences for mission failure as a price for saving Wanda.

But then the Soldier had lied.

Or maybe he hadn’t—Clint said he’d taken care of her, after all.

_But you didn’t say dead. He specifically asked, and you avoided the question._ And the Soldier is smart enough to figure that out.

So he lied. To protect Clint? Or for some other reason?

_It doesn’t matter why. He gave you a chance. Take it._

They stop in Mikhail’s office. Clint sways on his feet as the door closes behind them. “I would like a full briefing,” Mikhail says. “From mission beginning to end. Every detail.”

“Car dropped us off a couple blocks away. We got set up. I took out the security team. The Soldier entered the safe house.” He takes a deep breath. “I was monitoring the situation when I saw the target coming down the street. She saw the security team and ran into the house, then came out a few minutes later. The Soldier pursued her. Gunfire was exchanged and she threw a car at him. I left my position to help.”

Mikhail crosses his arms. “Our surveillance team informed me that the Soldier had the situation under control, and you interfered.”

Fucking _fuck_ , of course they were watching. Clint keeps his expression calm. “I read the situation differently.”

“How so?”

“The target had a gift for manipulating energy. She was preparing to blast through the Soldier. I’ve seen it before. She once pulled someone’s heart out of his chest with nothing but her mind. Trust me, it was not under control.”

Okay, so the heart was Ultron’s, and he wasn’t technically alive, but the words have the intended effect. Mikhail nods, and gestures for him to continue.

“I left my position. I moved the Soldier out of danger. She tried to convince me to leave with her. I shot at her, but missed, and she went inside the house. I made sure the Soldier was okay, then followed her in.”

Mikhail holds up a hand. “You missed?”

Clint blinks. “I…”

“You never miss,” Mikhail says. Danger starts to edge into his tone. “Isn’t that what you repeatedly have told me?”

Clint takes a deep breath. This is the moment. He’s on the precipice now. One wrong move, and he’ll fall.

“Agent Barton.”

“I did it on purpose.” He lets the emotion leak into his voice and stares at the floor. “I was ready to do it. I had her lined up. And then I looked at her, and I couldn’t.”

Fine, thin, invisible lines. Too much and it’s not believable. Too little and Mikhail will be suspicious that he’s holding back. The Soldier gave Clint an unexpected second chance, and there can be no mistakes. Not now.

Clint chances a glance up and waits. He can’t read past Mikhail’s exterior, but after an eternity, the man says, “Continue.”

“So I missed,” Clint says. “She ran inside. I followed her. We argued. She said I had to go back with her. I said I couldn’t.”

“Why couldn’t you?” Mikhail asks. “She was right there. She would have taken you. You could have gone back to your old life.”

Clint swallows. “No I couldn’t.” He looks up at Mikhail. “SHIELD wouldn’t take me back. Not now. They’d interrogate me until they knew everything, and then…”

Something catches in his throat, but Mikhail finishes the sentence for him. “And then they’d abandon you. Wouldn’t they?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Clint mumbles, thinking of the Accords and his time on the Raft.

“SHIELD is good at discarding what they no longer need,” Mikhail agrees softly. “Finish your story, _ptichka_.”

“We argued,” Clint says again. “I told her to leave me alone. That I didn’t want to go with her. She said that I had a choice—I could either kill her, or leave with her, because she wasn’t going back alone.” He clenches his fists. “So I did what I had to do.”

He waits for the judgement, terrified that Mikhail will see through everything and condemn him to the darkness. His back stings with the phantom sensation of a whip and a whispered promise that next time will be worse. _Please believe me,_ he silently begs, fixing his eyes on the floor. _I can’t take anything else. Not now._

Mikhail puts a hand on his shoulder. “I am sorry you had to do that. I was hoping you could avoid that choice. That is why I kept you on the perimeter. I should have had more faith in you.”

“It had to be me,” Clint says. “It…it wouldn’t be fair otherwise.”

“I understand,” Mikhail says. “I was in your position, once. I chose the same way.”

Clint snaps his head up. “You _what_?”

Mikhail smiles slightly. “A story for another time,” he promises. “What caused the explosion?”

“She was wearing a positioning system to help navigate the time tunnels. They also monitor vital signs. If an agent dies while wearing it, it self-destructs and destroys the tech.” This is probably the least believable thing he’s ever said, but he’s counting on the imagination of the future. 2024 having self-destructing watches sounds just about right for someone from 1965.

“Interesting,” Mikhail says. “Yours did not seem to contain that kind of technology.”

“It was in beta testing when I left. I guess they got it right.” He shrugs.

He’s not sure if Mikhail buys it, but he at least doesn’t push the subject further. “No matter. You need to rest. You did so well, Clint. I am very pleased with your performance.”

Clint waits for the warm feeling that usually comes with Mikhail’s praise, but there’s nothing. He nods anyway, because that’s what’s expected, and says, “Thank you, sir.”

He’s escorted back to his room. The guards let him keep his mission clothes, including the boots, and they don’t lock the door once they deposit him inside. They don’t even post a guard in the hallway. Complete freedom. Unfettered and open access. He's too tired to care.

Clint stumbles over to his bed and lays on it, maneuvering himself so his back is to the camera. Then slowly, carefully, he works the piece of glass out from under the mattress. He turns it over in his hands and studies the fragment of his reflection. After a moment he has to look away, and it’s more than he has in him to look back again.

Instead he drags the tip through the flesh of his arm. He waits for the clarity that usually accompanies it, or at least the pain, but there is nothing. He tries again. And again. And again. The blood wells up, the cuts heal, but there is nothing there except a screaming emptiness inside him.

He doesn’t feel a damn thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was kinda hoping I'd wake up and 2020 would just be one long April fools prank. But it wasn't. Sigh. At least Wanda gets to live!


	44. Chapter 43

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _You own nothing. You are nothing. You mean nothing._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Winter Soldier chapter, just for the hell of it.

_You own nothing. You are nothing. You mean nothing._

This was the first lesson the Soldier ever learned from HYDRA. He’d woken up from what he’d thought was a sure death, to bright lights and loud voices and a sense of something missing that he couldn’t piece together.

Lukas had been there. Right at the beginning. After they took his arm, they’d left him in isolation. He’d shivered in a cell, feverish and furious, until the door opened and Lukas walked in. The Soldier had raged and screamed at him until his voice gave out and he collapsed in his chains.

Then Lukas had calmly stated the rules. _You are an asset of HYDRA. You are ours to use until we decide you are no longer useful. You own nothing. You are nothing. You mean nothing._

They’d taken everything. His body, his clothes, his name, his memories. They hollowed him out and filled him up with whatever they wanted. And then they did it again. And again.

Some things had stayed. They let him keep the lessons. They let him keep the knowledge they’d forced on him. He knows so many things now that he is sure he didn’t know before. Like what a man sounds like when a knife slips between his ribs. Or how it feels to break his own bones in penance for his mistakes.

And throughout it all, they never stopped reminding him. _You own nothing. You are nothing. You mean nothing._

Then Barton had come. He was full of fire and anger and it hurt to watch him, although the Soldier didn’t know why. And he said things like _Steve_ and _Brooklyn_ and those things hurt too, even though there was something familiar about their taste in his mouth.

They’d taken him to the Chair after that encounter. They burned his mind and stretched it thin but when he stood up afterwards, he still knew those two words. Still had a little piece of himself. For the first time, the Chair hadn’t emptied him completely. They tested him. He lied.

There were more missions. There were more wipes, and more tests to see if those wipes worked. But he still knew. He lied to them and they never guessed, and he _still knew_.

And now Barton has given him another word. _Barnes._

That’s his name. He has a name. He is someone.

The Soldier clings to this as the doctors work on him. He holds still as they pull out the bullets, shove a tube in his chest and re-inflate his lung, stitch up the holes that won’t close on their own. The pain is irrelevant. He has a name.

When they are done, Lukas comes to debrief him. The female doctor, the nicest one, tries to head him off, but Lukas ignores her. “Full mission report,” he says, looming over the Soldier’s bed like a tidal wave. “I want to know _everything_.”

The Soldier knows they were watching. They are always watching. So he tells them what they saw. He had gone into the house. The target wasn’t there. He neutralized the situation and waited, like he was supposed to. The target came in and threw him through a wall. He recovered. Followed the target and the other one outside. They fought. Barton attempted to help. The target ran back inside. The Soldier was compromised by injuries, so Barton went in after her and completed the mission.

It is the truth. It is a lie. The girl is not dead. He has a name.

Lukas absorbs the information calmly. “You said there was a second person,” he says. “What happened to him?”

“He was injured trying to protect the target. Mission parameters did not identify him as a secondary. We left him at the scene.”

Lukas scowls slightly. “Make a note of that,” he says over his shoulder to someone the Soldier cannot see. “We will have to eliminate him.”

He turns to the doctors. “How long for recovery?”

“We estimate several hours,” the woman says. “And it has been awake for nearly three days. If you want it in peak condition, it will need to rest.”

“When is the next wipe?”

“Two days, if we are keeping to the standard maintenance.”

“That is fine.” Lukas looks down at the Soldier. “Is that the complete report?”

It is a lie. He has a name. “Yes sir.”

Lukas taps his fingers on the Soldier’s arm. “I want hourly updates,” he says to the doctor. “It is to be mission-ready as soon as possible.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lukas leaves, and the doctors continue their work. They place IVs, change bandages, monitor wounds, pump him with drugs. They talk about him like he is not here, like he is a piece of equipment that has broken. To most of them, that is all he is.

But not to him. Not anymore. He is someone.

And now he has a name.


	45. Chapter 44

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “But you need to be more careful, Barton. You keep going this way, you’re going to explode around the wrong person. Someone who won’t be as forgiving if all your details don’t match a different story.”
> 
> “I’m trying,” he says.
> 
> “Try harder. Weaknesses are not tolerated here. You need to keep yourself under control.”

Clint runs down a dirt path. There’s a bow in his hands and a quiver of arrows strapped to his back. His lungs burn as he sucks in a ragged breath and jumps over the creek, soaring just a little further than a regular person might be able to do.

There's a target to his left. He fires without turning his head. The arrow lands with the rest of them. _Thirteen._

Another jump, another target— _fourteen_ — and then he’s over the finish line, breathing hard and looking at Elizaveta.

“Six minutes and twenty-seven seconds,” she says, looking impressed. “Not bad.”

They're outside in the woods just off the base. True to Mikhail's promise, he'd let Elizaveta bring Clint out here to run the obstacle course. Someone had even put up targets for him. They're still stationary, but at least running the course and shooting provides more of a challenge than the regular range. He likes the intensity of it, too, the single-minded goal. Run, and run fast. Hit the targets. No room for worry, or anxiety, or wondering if he made a mistake with Wanda. Just a simple, clear path. It's the closest he gets to inner peace these days.

“Too slow,” Clint says to her, and he stumbles over to his canteen. He takes a few swallows. “I was faster last time. I’m going again.”

She turns her head. “You should take a break, Barton. That’s your sixth run. You might be enhanced, but you’re not a machine.”

It's a valid point, but he doesn't really care. There's something sitting heavy in his chest, and he's going to run until he either falls over or can't feel it anymore. “I didn’t ask for your opinion,” he says, dropping the bottle. “I’m going again.”

She rolls her eyes. “No, you're not. Just stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Whatever this is.” She waves a hand. "Whatever you think you're punishing yourself for."

_Just like Nat_ , Clint thinks. _Too fucking astute for her own good._ “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he denies, and he moves towards the starting line.

Elizaveta trips him.

It’s childish, but effective. He falls to his hands and knees and she takes him down the rest of the way, resting her weight on his ass and easily pinning his arms behind his back. “I said stop it,” she snarls in his ear.

“Get the fuck off me,” he snarls back, trying to kick her. She sighs and twists his arm until he grunts in pain and holds still beneath her.

“Not until you tell me what your problem is.”

“My entire life has been a series of problems,” Clint says acidly. “How much time do you have?”

“Don’t play that game. You have been acting like a child since your last mission. What happened?”

_Don’t come back. I don’t know if I can do this a second time._

Clint yanks his arms to no avail. “I killed my friend,” he says. “Happy?”

“I heard,” she says. “What else happened?”

“What do you mean, what else? That’s not enough to give a guy nightmares?”

“Not a guy like you. You’re tougher than that. Smart enough to not let it affect you this badly.” She gets off him, finally, and sits in the dirt by his head. Clint coughs once, then rolls over and sits up. He doesn’t try to get up and run. Elizaveta sitting down is just as quick as Elizaveta standing up.

“There’s no cameras out here,” she says. “No listening devices. It’s just us. Let’s talk.”

“What is this, therapy?” he snorts. He undoes the quiver and lets it fall behind him. “You wanna play psychologist? Ask how that makes me feel?”

“I’m offering you a chance to get this off your chest,” she says. “This has been happening for weeks, and since you came back, it’s been worse. You are angry, and you’re scared, and I want to know why.”

Clint makes a wild gesture around himself. “Seriously? I’m trapped in the past. I’m never going to see my family again. Not only am I running missions and killing for an organization that I swore to help take down, but I also handed them the blueprints to fucking _time_ _travel_. Oh, and I sent away my one and only chance of getting out of here because I have some kind of masochistic martyr complex.” He laughs bitterly. “I wake up every morning surprised I haven’t killed myself in my sleep. If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.”

Elizaveta is quiet for a long moment, long enough for Clint to regret both the outburst and wasting a Game of Thrones reference on her. Then she says, “Sent her away?”

Ice runs through his veins, and it takes everything he has to stay stoic. “Come again?”

Elizaveta studies his face. “She’s not dead, is she?”

Yeah, she's definitely like Nat. _You fucking idiot._ He opens his mouth to deny it, but she just gives him a Look, and he stops. Then he says, “Are you going to tell Mikhail?”

The sunlight moves through the clouds and spills in a dappled pattern through the trees. Clint stretches his hand out to a beam while he waits for an answer. It’s early April now, he’s learned. Just a few days shy of Easter. He’s been here almost a full year.

“No,” Elizaveta finally says.

He watches the sun move over his skin. “Why not?”

“Do you think she’s going to come back?”

“She’s stubborn. It’s possible. I hope she doesn’t.” He rips a hopeful blade of grass from the ground. “I hope she’s smart enough to make the right choices. I told her to stay away.”

“That’s what the nightmares are about,” Elizaveta says. “Her coming back.”

That and other things, but he’s always had a problem with his demons. “I shot at her. I missed on purpose, but I did it. All I can think of is how easy it would have been to actually hit her. And in my dreams, I do. I see her die, or my family, or my friends, and it’s always my fault. My shot.”

“Is it your fault if someone else makes you do it?” Elizaveta asks. “You would just be following orders.”

Clint snorts. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

“Making everything your responsibility is a stupid way to live.”

“I’m aware. Are you going to tell Mikhail?”

“I said I wouldn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because there is no point. If she stays away, she may as well be dead. And if she comes back, I won’t be the one he punishes no matter what I know.” She shrugs. “I could use it as leverage for something, but you have nothing I want.” Her gaze drifts to his pants. “Well. Nothing I am not already getting.”

Clint feels his face flush. “Great. Thanks.”

She shrugs again. “But you need to be more careful, Barton. You keep going this way, you’re going to explode around the wrong person. Someone who won’t be as forgiving if all your details don’t match a different story.”

“I’m trying,” he says.

“Try harder. Weaknesses are not tolerated here. You need to keep yourself under control.”

He hates it, but she’s right. He’s been on edge for weeks. Twitchy, almost. Oscillating between numbness and rage and fear, constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. Working out helps, and so does his little nightly ritual with the mirror shard, but he’s still on the edge of losing it. If this was SHIELD, they would have pulled him off the roster long ago for a psych exam and mandated rest time.

“Got any advice?” he asks, standing up and brushing the dirt off.

Elizaveta stands too. “What did SHIELD teach you to do when things went wrong mid-mission?”

“Compartmentalize,” he says. “Acknowledge that it happened and then move on. Don’t get emotional.”

“Pretend this is all a mission,” she says. “What happened happened. Put it away and move on. Keep emotion out of it.”

“I guess,” he says, popping his vertebrae with an unpleasant cracking sound. “Although Psych always warned us that repressing and isolating those things long-term isn’t good for mental health.” _As I am so clearly demonstrating._

“ _Long_ is relative,” she says. “But I promise you that if you lose it around Mikhail and he gets the truth, your long-term mental health will be the least of your concerns. Understand?”

“Yes.” He shifts his weight a little and then says, “Thank you.”

It’s nice, he thinks, to have someone to share it with. Even just for a moment. He’s always had Natasha, but since her death, his list of people he can talk to has shrunk considerably. And here, it's even shorter. 

He doesn’t entirely trust Elizaveta. Not in everything. But having her is better than nothing, and for a moment, the constant stress and pressure has eased a little. He breathes in the spring air and lets it out with a slow count. _Compartmentalize. It’s over. Decision made. Wanda is gone, and she's not coming back.  
_

“You are welcome. Do you still want to run?”

He turns and looks at the trail. “Not really.”

“Alright. We will go in.” Elizaveta takes a step towards their little pile of equipment, and on impulse, Clint sticks out his foot.

She falls more gracefully than he did, rolling with the momentum until she’s on her ass in the dirt and glaring up at him. Clint slowly pulls his foot back. “Gotcha.”

“You are an asshole,” she says, but she’s grinning. He grins back, distracted by how the bits of sunlight makes her eyes look so blue, and totally misses her foot snaking behind his ankle.

He lands flat on his back in the dirt beside her. “Rude,” he wheezes, rubbing at his hip.

“Gotcha,” she says with a smirk, and she kisses him.

They walk out of the woods later, looking more or less presentable. Clint plans on heading straight to the showers, since he’s allowed to walk there by himself now like a big boy. Then probably dinner after. Mikhail gave him permission to eat in the mess hall a few days after the mission, and he’s been taking advantage of the marginally warmer food. Maybe Elizaveta will join him if he begs nicely. She's really not so bad as he first thought. She still scares him a little, but he does like her. He thinks that in another life, she and Natasha would have been friends. Even Laura—

He shuts the thought down hard. _No. You don't deserve to think about her. Not anymore._ The heaviness creeps back into his chest, and he clenches his fists. _Acknowledge that it happened, and then bury that shit hard. Don't get emotional. Don't let it affect you._

He focuses on concrete things. Shower. Dinner. These are the goals. He can do that. Shower. Dinner. Bed.

Except waiting at the edge of the woods is Mikhail. He looks a little keyed up, and Clint wonders what the deal is.

“How was it?” he asks when they’re close enough.

“Good,” Elizaveta says. “He’s quick. He almost beat your record.”

_Almost?_ Clint is half tempted to go run the damn thing again right now. Surely he can do better than Mikhail.

“Wonderful to hear,” Mikhail says. “I am glad you are progressing so well.” He falls into step beside them. Clint is dying to ask why he’s out here, but he keeps his mouth shut _._

Elizaveta does it for him. “What do you need, Mikhail?”

“I am just checking on him, currently. We are planning another mission. One of great importance.” He looks over at Clint. “You will be needed. Are you ready?”

“Yes, sir,” Clint says. “What’s the mission?”

“Not here. Be in my office by 2100. I will brief you then.”

“Understood.”

Mikhail leaves them.

“That was interesting,” Elizaveta says, staring after him. “I wonder what this mission is.”

“I don’t know,” Clint says, a sinking feeling in his stomach. Something is about to change. “Guess I’ll find out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun quarantine fact, I'm currently living with my parents. It's fine, we get on well and everything and I love them dearly. But it can be slightly awkward at times. Like yesterday: it's 8am or so, I'm working on a fic. My dad sits down at the table across from me and starts reading me passages he likes from his Very Christian Book by a Very Christian Author, and then I had to spend the next ten minutes nodding and smiling while pretending I wasn't in the middle of writing this super X-rated non-con gay blowjob. So...yeah. Good times.
> 
> PS, loved that y'all loved the Winter Soldier chapter! It got in my head and I couldn't get it out, so I figured I'd throw it up for the hell of it. Was totally floored by the reactions. I'll definitely write another one of them if the story calls for it!


	46. Chapter 45

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wanda blinks away tears and twists her hands in the blanket. “I think he’s been there a long time,” she says softly. “Longer than we know.”

The GPS guides Wanda home without her having to do anything, which is good because she can barely see through her tears. She falls out of time onto the floor of the machine. Pain from the bullet wounds flares through her and she stifles a scream, curling into herself.

There’s shouting. SHIELD agents swarm around her. Someone calls for a medic. A dozen hands pull her off the machine and lay her onto the ground. “Wanda,” a calm voice says. “Wanda. Can you hear me?”

“I hear you,” she says. Her mouth feels thick.

“English, Wanda. Please.”

“I hear you,” she tries again.

“Better. What happened, kid?”

Bruce, her mind supplies. Bruce is talking to her.

“They shot me,” she says, hissing in pain as she tries to move. “Hurts.”

“I know. We’re getting the medics. Hold still. Where’s Clint?”

Wanda shakes her head. Fresh tears spill from her eyes. “He wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t what?”

“Come back.”

“ _What_?”

She tries to explain, but she can’t do it. The words are slippery and everything is red and green and spinning spinning spinning and she can’t hear right

\---

“—pressure on that, now!”

“—ay with us, Wanda, stay with—“

\---

“Where —?”

“Not now, Sam. Wanda’s been —.”

\---

“—cking mess in here, give me—“

“—ing up, give her some mor—“

\---

There’s something cold in her arm. “Go to sleep,” a whisper tells her, so she does.

\---

Angry voices. Shouting. Wanda tries to blink, but her eyes won’t move.

“—a mission report, wake her up—“

“I’m not doing that, she—put that down!”

A needle in her arm. Another shout.

She goes back to sleep.

\---

The second time she wakes up, it’s to a dim room, a doctor, and a man in a suit. “Maximoff,” he says. “Can you hear me?”

She tries to answer, but there’s something in her throat. She blinks.

“You’re on a ventilator,” the doctor says. “I wanted to wait to wake you up, but _somebody_ —“ she looks pointedly at the suited man— “is impatient. I’m sorry.”

“I need a mission report,” the man says. “It’s urgent. We have questions.”

Wanda manages to gather enough of herself to tap the tube in her throat.

“That needs to stay in,” the doctor says.

“You can write,” the man snaps. He shoves a StarkPad at her. “Mission report.”

“Give her a chance to wake up,” the doctor says. She pushes her way in between Wanda and the man. “Back off. She might be your agent, but she’s _my_ patient.”

The man grumbles, but backs off. The doctor fusses over Wanda for a bit, taking vitals and recording things. Wanda looks at her gratefully and tries to focus on making her hands work. Her twin wounds throb in sync, and she winces.

“Pain?” the doctor asks. Wanda nods. “I’ll get you some—“

“No,” the man says. “I need her alert.”

The doctor turns to him again, but Wanda tugs on her sleeve. OKAY, she types on the pad.

“Are you sure?”

YES.

The man smiles. “I am sorry to have to wake you up,” he says, not looking sorry at all, “but we really need to know what happened. Please.”

She types. Despite being groggy from the sedation, the memory is sharp and clear in her mind, and it spills easily from her.

When she’s done, he takes the pad back from her and reads it with eager eyes. Wanda falls back against the pillow and winces. The pain is worse now, turned up from a mild annoyance to a screaming, pulsing wave. The doctor watches her with careful eyes.

“What does this mean,” the man says, pointing to a place on the pad. “He wouldn’t come back with you?”

She motions for the pad, and writes, TOLD ME TO LEAVE HIM

The man scowls. “I see. And he definitely killed the security team?”

ARROWS

“And they know about the time travel? You’re _sure_ about that?”

HE SAID HE TOLD THEM

Wanda looks up in time to see something dark cross the man’s expression. “I see,” he says, taking back the pad. “That certainly paints a different picture, doesn’t it?”

She wants to tell him more. She wants to tell him about Clint’s sunken eyes and his scars and how he looked so broken and defeated. But when she reaches for the pad, he pulls it away.

Wanda motions more frantically, but the man isn’t looking at her. “He _told_ them,” he mutters, disgust in his voice. “Shameful.”

_He didn’t want to tell them. They tortured him._ But her voice is gone, and she can’t reach the Starkpad, and the pain is flaring again, a white fuzziness at her vision that threatens to overwhelm everything she knows. The room slides a little in her vision, warping in the middle.

The doctor is at her side in an instant. “I told you not to,” she snarls, reaching for something. “I swear to God if you exacerbated her injuries I’m going to—“

Wanda never hears the rest. Something cold goes in her arm, and the darkness covers her once again.

\---

She comes back to consciousness for the third time in bits and pieces, with the muted sensation of pain floating through her mind. _Drugs,_ she thinks, and for a moment she panics, thinking HYDRA got her along with Clint and they’ll—

“Easy,” says a familiar voice. A firm hand grips her wrist. “Wanda. Easy. You’re okay. You’re safe.”

“Where?” she tries to ask, but the words come out as a croak.

The person answers anyway. “You’re at SHIELD. Hospital wing.”

She licks her dry lips and forces her eyes open. The voice is Sam; he’s sitting next to her with a book on his lap and a concerned look on his face. “Hey,” he says, smiling a little. “Good to see you.”

Wanda starts to ask what happened, but he holds up a hand. “Ice chip?”

She nods. He manipulates the hospital bed a little more upright, then offers her one. She sucks on it greedily, the desert in her mouth slowly greening. “Sam,” she says.

“Wanda.” He offers her another one.

“What day is it?”

“Thursday. You’ve been asleep for almost twenty-four hours. Some asshole woke you up after your surgery, made you write a mission report.” Wanda vaguely remembers it. “After that, your heart rate spiked. Some kind of stress thing, the doc said. She put you back under. She was not pleased with him.”

Wanda shifts a little, wincing as the pain in her arm and leg spikes up. He holds up a hand. “I wouldn’t try to move too much. You came back with two nasty bullet wounds and a concussion. Must have been a hell of a fight.”

The memory unfolds in her mind, like a box opening, and she shudders a little. “Winter Soldier,” she says, taking another chip. “Shot me.”

“Rough,” he says. “I’ll tell Bucky to apologize.”

She laughs. It turns into a cough.

Sam feeds her another ice chip. “So is that what happened? He shot you and you triggered the suit?”

“I didn’t trigger it,” she whispers. “Clint did.”

He freezes. “What?”

“I found him,” she says. It hurts to speak, hurts to remember, but she has to get the words out to somebody. “I found him. He was with the Soldier. They were coming after me, I think.”

“We’ve been getting reports,” he says. “You blew up a base?”

“Two. Not on purpose.” She coughs again. “I was looking for him. There was a soldier helping me. We found out about a secret base near Berlin. Went to check it out. The Soldier was there. And so was Clint.”

Wanda blinks away tears and twists her hands in the blanket. “I think he’s been there a long time,” she says softly. “Longer than we know.”

“What makes you say that?” Sam’s voice is calm, but there’s rigid tension in his posture.

“He wasn’t speaking English,” Wanda says. “Even when I did. He was only speaking Russian. Perfectly, like he was fluent.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Sam says. “Clint’s good at languages. Not as good as Nat was, but he’s better than he gave himself credit for.”

“That’s not the only thing,” she says, and before she loses her nerve, she blurts out the whole story. Everything that she wrote in the mission report, and everything she couldn’t put into words.

Sam listens patiently throughout all of it. When she’s done, he leans back in his chair and taps his fingers on his knee. “That’s…” he says, trailing off.

“I think they broke him.” Wanda wipes her face with her good hand. “You should have seen his face, Sam. I have never seen him look like that.”

Sam shakes his head. “That’s…” he starts again. “I don’t know what to say.” He looks impossibly sad.

“Why doesn’t he want us to help him?” she asks. “I don’t understand.”

“Trying to keep us safe, I guess.” Sam shakes his head. “Remember the team we sent for him originally? They never came back. We found records of their deaths in SHIELD archives. Point blank shots. Execution.”

“Are we sure they ever found him? That could have been anything.”

Another head shake. “The note in their file said they were shipped to SHIELD from a known HYDRA base, and their last report in said they’d found his location. I bet they found him, and HYDRA used them as leverage for something.”

Wanda rolls the IV line in her fingers. “So he didn’t want HYDRA to capture me. Fine. Why didn’t he come back with me? Why would he stay?”

“Because he’s been compromised,” says another voice. A man in a three piece suit is leaning against the doorjamb. The same asshole from before, she remembers, and scowls in irritation. He shakes his head in mock sadness. “It’s a shame, really.”

“What is a shame?” Wanda asks, sitting up further. The pain flares up, but it’s muted enough that she doesn’t care.

“Losing a good agent. Barton will be missed.”

“Are you kidding me?” Wanda snaps. “You’re _leaving_ him there?”

The man sighs. “Maximoff, I know this is difficult to understand. I’m aware you and Barton were close.”

“He’s one of ours,” Sam says. “We don’t leave men behind.”

“We do if they’re compromised. From your own description, he is voluntarily working for HYDRA.”

“They tortured him!” Wanda shouts. “I saw it!”

“You saw him in a ten minute window, during which he shot at you and told you not to come back. That does not sound like the actions of a prisoner of war who’s been tortured and wants to come home.”

Wanda flounders for words, completely floored by the amount of bullshit the man just spewed. From the looks of it, Sam feels the same way. “People react differently to torture,” he says. “And Barton was trying to protect Wanda, not kill her. You heard what she said. He shot an arrow at her point-blank and missed. He _never_ misses, not unless he wants to. He did it on purpose to get her into the house so he could send her back.”

“Why didn’t he just send her back right then?”

“Any number of reasons.” Sam sounds pissed. “Guess we’ll have to ask him for the whole story, won’t we?”

The man shakes his head. “No. Two agents have already died, and Maximoff came back severely wounded. I am not risking anyone else to go rescue a man who clearly does not want to be rescued. End of discussion.”

“And what about the time travel?” Wanda challenges. “He said they know, and they’re working on their own machine. Are you just going to let them do that?”

“Of course not. We are already working on a number of plans. But rescuing Clint Barton is not among them.” He crosses his arms. “We’ll mark him as deceased with honors. He’ll have a nice funeral. His family will have closure. It’s better than he deserves.”

“You don’t know shit about what he deserves,” Wanda says. Her voice is shaking with rage. “You fucking bureaucratic _asshole_.”

“If HYDRA truly does know about time travel, then it’s because he told them. Which also makes him a traitor.”

“He. Was. Tortured.” She can barely see straight. “I’d like to see you stand up under that.”

The man shrugs. “Then he should have died, rather than give it up. Regardless, this is what’s happening. Clint Barton, as of this morning, is deceased. Further missions on his behalf are forbidden.”

A fist connects with his face. Wanda blinks. She hadn’t seen Sam move, but he’s on his feet, shaking out his hand. “You need to stop talking,” he says to the man. “Right now.”

The man rights himself. He presses a hand to his nose, then snarls in anger as it comes away bloody. “You’re suspended,” he says nasally, pointing a red finger at Sam. “Both of you. Suspended indefinitely, starting right now. If either of you go near the machine, you’ll be arrested.”

He storms out, slamming the door behind him.

Wanda forces herself to take a deep breath. “I’m going to kill that man,” she says.

“I’ll help.” Sam is massaging his knuckles and staring at the door, anger etched into the lines of his frown. After a moment, he returns to his seat and shakes his head. “Asshole.”

“Clint’s not a traitor,” Wanda says. “He’s _not_.”

“I agree,” Sam says, eyes still on the door. “You’re right. If he told them, then it’s only because they tortured it out of him. And I know Clint. He’s a tough son of a bitch. Whatever they did to him, it was brutal.”

“He _was_ tortured,” Wanda says, thinking about the scars on his wrists and the circles under his eyes. “I could see it. He was scared, too, and trying to hide it.”

Sam thinks. “He told you it was his job to save everybody. Right? That’s what he said?”

“Yes.”

He mulls the information over, then nods. “Okay. Here’s what I think happened. Clint landed in 1965. He somehow got picked up by HYDRA. They must have figured out his cover story, and forced him into giving up time travel.”

Wanda thinks about Barnes, and the horrors tucked away in his broken memories . “If it was anything like what they did to Barnes…” she says.

Sam shudders. “So he gave it up. Anyone would have. He probably held out for a long time. But they got it, and he feels like it’s his fault. So he wanted to stay and make things right.”

“He said it couldn’t be fixed,” Wanda murmurs. “Not this time.”

“He’ll try anyway. That’s what he does. He didn’t want you in danger, so he sent you back. That way if something goes wrong, he’s the only one hurt for it.”

“It’s not fair,” she says. “He shouldn’t have to do it alone.”

“And he’s not going to.” Sam stands up. “We’re going to help him.”

Wanda looks up sharply. “We just got suspended, Sam.”

“Did we? I must have misunderstood.” He puts a hand on hers. “If you don’t want to go, I’ll understand.”

“I didn’t say that,” she says, reaching for her IV. “Give me five minutes.”

Sam pushes her hand away. “Hang on. You’re not going to help anybody like this. The doctors said you’ll need at least a week in here. I’m going to gather some supplies, talk to some people, do a little research.”

“And then?”

“And then you and I are going to 1965,” he says. “And we’re going to bring him home, whether he likes it or not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still alive! Sorry for the longer wait. I had an idea for a Winter Soldier AU, and my brain was 100% on board with it, to the point where I've basically done nothing for the past week except pour words onto paper. Literally, nothing else. My hands hurt from typing so much. I haven't been utterly consumed by an idea like that since writing Rules, so I ran with it. I'm thrilled with the results so far, but I will admit to neglecting this fic a bit. So I finished the chapter on my other one, scribbled down some ideas, then bounced back over here. Hopefully the good news about Sam and Wanda will make up for your wait. :D 
> 
> Oh and Happy Easter, for those who celebrate, and happy candy day for those who don't!


	47. Chapter 46

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Pym Particles,” Wanda says. “That’s right.”
> 
> “And there’s only one place they can find them.” Sam tucks the vial into his pocket. “Which means at some point, they’re going to have to try and get to Hank Pym.”
> 
> “Okay.”
> 
> “So here’s my thought. We go back to the day after you saw Clint, but to America instead of Germany. We talk to Pym and warn him. We have SHIELD put their ear to the ground. And we wait.”

There are two armed guards outside her door now at all times. Ostensibly to keep her safe, although Wanda doesn’t know what from. No one is coming for her. Not in this time.

Really, all they do is stop people from visiting. Or rather, stop Sam. The first time he tries, two days after punching the suited guy, they bar his way. “Sorry Mr. Falcon sir,” one says, sounding very young and very apologetic. “But we’re under orders not to let you in.”

“Let him in,” Wanda calls, but they ignore her too.

Sam looks at her, then at the guards. “Who told you that?”

“Sir, you need to leave now.” The guard puts a hand on his gun.

Sam holds his hands up. “Okay,” he says. “Don’t do that. I’m leaving.”

A few days later, it’s the same story. This time, Wanda tilts her head at the window, and he nods. When he leaves, she feeds the guards some story about taking a nap, and closes the door firmly. It doesn’t lock, but she drags a chair in front of it for good measure. Then she opens the window.

Twenty minutes later, Sam is climbing through it. “That was fun,” he says, peeling a pair of black gloves off.

“Where’s your pack?” Wanda asks. “I’d thought you’d fly in.”

“Testing some new tech for R&D,” he says. “Based off that Parker kid. He’s been working with them.” Sam puts the gloves back on, then walks over to a wall. “Check it out.”

Wanda watches, impressed, as he scales the wall and waves at her from the ceiling. “That’s handy.”

“Yeah.” He climbs back down. “Anyway, Parker’s been helping them develop it. He asked me to try them out. He says hi, by the way.”

“Hello to him too.” She sits on the edge of her bed. “So what’s the plan?”

“You first. Are you feeling okay? Good enough to go? We can wait longer if we need to.”

“I’m fine,” she says. “I’ll be able to fight.”

Sam nods. “Okay.” He peels off the gloves and tucks them in his pocket. “I’m taking a bit of an educated guess here, but I think it’s a good one.”

Wanda waits, fingers tapping on her bandages. “I’m listening.”

“HYDRA might have a time machine,” he says. “But if they’re going to make it work, they need one thing.” He holds up a familiar red vial.

“Pym Particles,” Wanda says. “That’s right.”

“And there’s only one place they can find them.” Sam tucks the vial into his pocket. “Which means at some point, they’re going to have to try and get to Hank Pym.”

“Okay.”

“So here’s my thought. We go back to the day after you saw Clint, but to America instead of Germany. We talk to Pym and warn him. We have SHIELD put their ear to the ground. And we wait.”

“How can you be sure they’ll send Clint to get him?” she asks. “What if they send someone else?”

“I don’t think they will.” He walks over to the window and closes it. “From what you said, they’re already sending him out on missions. And he’s perfect for this one—he knows who Hank is, he knows why they need him. If HYDRA is any kind of smart, they’ll send him. I certainly would. And if they don’t, then we still know where that black base is. It’ll be messier, but we can go in and get him too. But I want to try this way first. That asshole was right, we’ve already lost people on this job. Including you, almost. I don’t want to risk something if we don’t have to.”

Wanda nods. “So we try to draw him out first.”

“Exactly.”

“Makes sense,” she says. “Got a plan?”

“You bet.” He tosses a suit and a GPS at her. “Be ready by tonight. I’ll be back for you.” He moves the chair and opens the door. “Excuse me, gentlemen.”

The guards stare at him. “We’re not supposed to let you in,” one says, confusion in his voice.

“You’re letting me out,” Sam says, patting him on the shoulder. “So you’re good. No worries.”

He walks right past them. They stare after him, dumbfounded, then turn to Wanda. She shrugs and tries to look innocent.

“How did he get in?” one of them finally asks.

“Magic,” Wanda says, and she closes the door in his face.

Sam didn’t give her a specific time, so as soon as the sun goes down, she strips out of her hospital gown and puts the suit on. It’s not exactly comfortable, and her wounds ache as she adjust the material over them. But she manages.

The doctor comes in just as she finishes. Her lips purse disapprovingly, but all she says is, “If you tear your stitches, I’m not doing them again.”

“Fair enough,” Wanda says.

The doctor holds out a hand. “Been a pleasure having you. Check in when you get back, if you don’t mind.”

Wanda shakes it. “Will do.”

At the door, Sam appears. “Ready?” he asks, looking in at her.

“Ready,” she says.

The guards look between the two of them. “You’re not supposed to come in,” one says to Sam, although he sounds very unsure of himself. Wanda snickers.

“He’s not,” she says. “I’m coming out.”

The guard shakes his head. “Not supposed to let you do that either.”

“That’s nice,” Wanda says, and she lets the power flicker over her fingers in a _very_ visible manner. “And how _exactly_ were you planning on stopping me?”

The first guard swallows, then touches the arm of the second. “I think we should go get coffee,” he says, his voice high pitched. “Like, right now.”

“Good choice,” Wanda says, and watches them walk down the hallway, somewhat enjoying the terrified backwards glances.

“You’re scary,” Sam says, motioning to the opposite direction. She joins him. “You know that?”

“Good thing I’m on your side.”

There are three more guards at the door to the machine room. Wanda slows, preparing for a fight. These are more heavily armed, and look less impressionable than their upstairs counterparts—although just as young.

“You shouldn’t be here,” one of them says, but he doesn’t point his gun. Wanda recognizes him.

“You’re Howie,” she says. “Right?” He’d asked her out not too terribly long ago. She’d turned him down.

“Yeah.” He shifts. “You’re suspended. You’re not supposed to be here. You know that, right?”

She nods.

“Then you know we can’t just let you through.” He shifts again. “I’m sorry. I really wish I could.”

Wanda starts to let the power build up. “I don’t want to hurt you, Howie.”

He swallows nervously. “I can’t let you in,” he says, sounding determined.

“Hang on,” Sam says. He reaches out and takes a spare magazine from Howie’s pocket, then turns and tosses it down the hallway. It clatters to the ground. “There’s a suspicious noise down there,” he says, thumbing at it. “You should go check that out. All of you. Could be intruders.”

Howie’s face splits into a smile. “You’re right,” he says. “Could be.” He waves the others forward, and they move away from the door.

“I was a soldier too,” Sam says to Wanda as they go in. “They’re supposed to protect that hallway. Now if they’re questioned, they can say they just followed orders.”

“As long as we’re in, I don’t care,” Wanda says. She takes a deep breath and heads for the control center.

There are two more agents sitting there, watching as they approach. “If you tell us we’re not supposed to be here,” Sam says, “I’m going to punch both of you.”

“You’re not,” says the one on the left. She flips her blond hair over her shoulder and smiles. “Fortunately for you, I don’t give a shit.”

“Me neither,” says the other. “You guys are going to get Barton, right?”

“That’s right,” Sam says. “You planning on stopping us, Jean?”

“Laura Barton is a good friend of mine,” Jean says. “And those kids deserve their dad back.” She smiles. “So how can I help?”

“Set us up,” Sam says, handing her a StarkPad. “Here’s our coordinates.”

He shoulders a bulky canvas bag and they climb up onto the machine. Wanda takes a deep breath and looks down at the floor.

“Hey,” Sam says, touching her shoulder. “You got backup this time.”

“I know,” she says. “I’m just…” She shakes her head, thinking about how broken he’d looked. “He needs to come home, Sam. We _have_ to do it right this time.”

Sam nods. “He will. I promise. I don’t care if we drag him here kicking and screaming.”

“Ready?” the woman calls.

Wanda flashes her a thumbs up. As she does, the door bursts open, and Mr. Suited Asshole himself comes storming in. “Get down!” he screams at them, waving his arms. “You are NOT authorized to be in here, get off that machine—“

“Whoops,” Jean says, and she presses the button. “My bad.”

Wanda laughs, and they vanish.

They land in a sparse woods as the last vestiges of daylight are speckling through the trees. Wanda gets her bearings and helps Sam back to his feet. “You okay?” she asks. “I know it’s a little jarring the first time.”

“I was phased out of existence by an infinity stone,” he says, retrieving the bag. “This is nothing.” He looks around. “Okay. We should be about a mile west of Camp Lehigh.”

“So what is the plan?” Wanda asks as they set off walking. “Other than warning Hank.”

“We have to talk to SHIELD first. They’ll know where he is.” He kicks a branch out of the way. “If Hank is willing, I want use him as bait and set up a trap. Try and draw HYDRA out.”

“And if he’s not?”

“Then we monitor for potential missions, and we plan for Plan B.”

Wanda nods. “What’s so special about Camp Lehigh?”

“I talked to Jean Masters. The blond girl we just met? She’s head of Launch Control. Sending people back in time is her main job. She told me they’ve been using Lehigh as kind of a past touchstone. Lots of agents come through here.” He kicks another branch away. “They’ll have records. People familiar with us. We’ll have to explain less.”

Wanda thinks about Redding, the agent who’d verified her security clearance. _He must have called here._ “That’ll be helpful.”

“Yeah.”

They hit the fence ten minutes later. As soon as they emerge from the woods, a young private levels his gun at them. “Stop!” he calls, and they both raise their hands.

“We’re with SHIELD,” Sam says. “Operation Chronos.”

The kid nods. He looks a little like Pietro, with the same wispy blond hair and quick movements. Wanda’s heart aches a little. “I’ll call it in,” he says, reaching for his radio. “Stay there, okay?”

Things happen very quickly after that. A truck rolls out and picks them up, driven by a no-nonsense soldier who salutes and never says a word. They’re escorted into an elevator, then through some drab hallways and into an office.

A striking woman with immaculate dark hair greets them as they walk in. “Hello,” she says, her English-accented voice warm and friendly. “My name is Peggy Carter.”

“I’m Wanda. And this is Sam.”

“Pleasure.” She sits down and gestures for them to do the same. “So. What year are you from?”

“2024,” Wanda says.

Sam is looking at her intently. “Weren’t you and Steve—?”

“That is not the topic of this discussion.” She smiles at him, but her tone of voice makes it very clear that it’s not up for further debate. Wanda stifles her own smile and leans forward.

“We need to find Hank Pym,” she says. “We think he might be in danger.”

“We _know_ he’s in danger,” Sam corrects. “But we don’t know when it’ll be.”

Carter raises a perfect eyebrow. “Go on.”

“HYDRA is going to need him. They’re building or have already built their own version of a time machine. But it only works with Pym Particles. So we know at some point in the near future, HYDRA is going to need him. We want to set a trap for them.”

“Why?”

“Because we think they’ll send a specific agent after him.”

Understanding flashes over Carter’s face. “Your missing friend?”

“Yes,” Wanda says. “How did you know?”

She reaches down and opens a desk drawer, then pulls out a file folder and drops it on the desk. “You people have been making quite a few waves, looking for him. Blowing up bases, calling in favors, destroying our safehouses.” She looks at them, her face serious. “That is a lot of trouble for one man.”

“He’s our friend,” Wanda says. “We need him back. He doesn’t belong here.”

“And what exactly do you think this trap will involve?”

“Nothing fancy,” Sam says. “We just need a time and place where Hank could be easily grabbed. Then we set up an ambush and grab Clint instead.”

Carter purses her lips for a moment, appearing deep in thought. Then she nods. “Well. As it so happens, we’ve already been monitoring Hank’s movements.”

Wanda tilts her head. “You have?”

“Yes. We received word some time ago that HYDRA was interested in his research. We’ve been keeping a close eye on him since then. I was planning on offering him a position here, as it were.” She pulls a piece of paper out of the file and hands it to Sam. “And you are correct, by the way. They are planning a mission to grab him. We’ve known about it for some time.”

Sam skims the paper, then hands it to Wanda. It’s an intelligence report. Short and to the point. _Hank Pym next target. Time unknown. Team unknown, likely Asset and other._

“Who is this from?” Wanda asks. “Where did you get that?”

“We have a source,” Carter says. “One of their agents has a younger sister. We agreed to transport the sister to the United States and place her with a family in exchange for occasional information.” She takes the paper back. “This agent is highly placed and rarely offers misinformation. She sent this report to us a week ago. We’ve known about their attempts to build a machine for some time, although only a few of my agents are privy to its actual purpose.”

Sam points. “It says Asset and other. Asset means Winter Soldier, right? So who’s the other?”

“I suspect you already know.”

“Clint,” Wanda says. She looks at Sam. “So they’re planning on sending Clint and Barnes to grab Pym?”

“Precisely,” Carter says. “So as you can see, you’re right in the nick of time.”

Wanda lets out a little relieved laugh. “That was a hell of a guess, Sam,” she says, patting his knee. “You got everything right.”

He shrugs modestly. “Just trying to be smart about it.” He indicates the paper again. “So this source. She can tell you when they’re coming?”

“We hope. In the meantime, I have a team watching Pym, and we’re monitoring for HYDRA movements as well.” She leans forward. “You said something about a trap?”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “We want to draw them out. Put Pym somewhere we can control the narrative. Then when they try to grab him, we grab Clint instead, and get him out of here.”

Carter nods. “And then?”

“And then?” Sam looks confused. “And then we go. Back to our time.”

“You’d be leaving me with quite a mess,” she says. “HYDRA didn’t have a time machine a year ago. The only reason they have it now is because your agent told them.”

Wanda slams her hand on the desk. “They _tortured_ him,” she says, her voice tight with anger. “Why does no one understand that?”

“I’m sure they did,” Carter says calmly, her eyes sympathetic. “And I don’t blame him. I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same. None of us can. But the fact remains that he _did_ tell them, which leaves me with a problem. Because once your agent is gone, they will still have this knowledge. And they will try for Pym again. We don’t have the resources to hold them off indefinitely. Particularly not since we lost Omaha.”

“What happened in Omaha?” Wanda asks.

“HYDRA raid,” Carter says. “They’re still trying to dig through the rubble. Many things went missing. We’ve had to allocate a significant amount of agents to it. Meaning I don’t have time to repeatedly deal with other fronts.” She taps a manicured fingernail on her desk. “So my question remains, Agents. What happens after you have your friend?”

Wanda looks at Sam, slightly ashamed. She hadn’t even thought about that. She’s been so focused on getting Clint back that she never thought completely through the ramifications of his actions. “I don’t know,” she says.

“Neither do I,” Carter says. “But luckily, we have some time to come up with a plan.” She smiles. “You’ll be staying here. My source will inform us when the plan to take Pym goes into action. And in the meantime, you can work on this.” She stands. “Questions?”

“No,” Sam says. He stands as well and shakes her hand. “Thank you for helping us. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Figure out how to clean up your mess,” she says, opening the door. “That will do nicely.”

Wanda stands slowly, thinking. “You said a safehouse blew up,” she says. “Was that in Germany? In Berlin?”

“Yes,” Carter says. “Last night.”

_A week ago for me._ “I was there,” she says. “With a friend. I don’t know if he survived or not. Would it be possible to find out?”

She knows it’s a long shot, but she has to ask. The last time she saw Anatoly, he was unconscious underneath a streetlamp.

“I’ll have someone look into it,” Carter says. “Is that all?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

They’re escorted from the office and down another set of drab hallways back to the elevator. The tight-lipped soldier takes them over to the the VIP barracks, where they each get a modest private room. Wanda spares hers a look and follows Sam. “That went well,” she says. “Or as well as could be expected.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “I guess.” He looks troubled. “I didn’t really think about the after. I mean—I thought about it, but not very hard. I just kind of assumed it would work itself out, in the future. Since everything seemed to be okay.”

Wanda sits on the cot. “Well, maybe it was like she said. Maybe SHIELD kept pushing back HYDRA, and they never got ahold of Pym. So nothing would have changed for us.”

“But she’s right.” He sits heavily on the bed. “We shouldn’t leave her with that responsibility. It’s not fair.”

“No, it’s not.” She taps her boot on the floor. “We’ll have to destroy it, you know. Everything. All their research.”

“Yeah.” Sam rubs his chin. “I think it’s the only way.”

They talk, brainstorming, until there’s a knock at the door. Sam opens it. “Yes?”

“I have some information requested,” a familiar figure says. He looks at Sam, and then his eyes fall on Wanda. Instantly, his face goes pale. “Aw, _fuck_. You?”

Wanda smiles and gets off the cot. “Agent Redding! How nice to see you again. How did you end up here?”

“Transferred two weeks ago,” he says, looking extremely nervous. He’s just as round and smug-looking as she remembers, but with significantly more fear this time. She likes it.

“You know this guy?” Sam asks.

“Agent Redding and I are _great_ friends,” Wanda says. “Right?”

Redding nods quickly and hands her a piece of paper, then backs out of punching distance. Wanda laughs and takes the paper.

It’s not much. Just a quick note, translated from German above, reporting that three bodies were recovered at the scene of a gas leak explosion in Berlin. Two dead, one taken to the hospital with critical wounds.

Wanda reads the words three times before they sink in, and she can’t stop the smile from spreading across her face. _Anatoly. He’s alive._

“That’s your friend,” Redding says. “The one in the hospital. I called and asked. He’s alive. As soon as he’s well enough to move we’ll bring him here.”

“Thank you,” Wanda says. She moves to hand him the report back, but he steps out of reach and shakes his head. “I’m not going to punch you again,” she says. “I’m over it.”

He hurries away anyway, muttering something about having to be somewhere. Wanda sets the paper on Sam’s dresser and leans against the wall.

“Good news, I take it?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Last time I was here, I ended up working with a defecting HYDRA agent. His name is Anatoly. He helped me find Clint.”

“What happened to him?”

“Barnes threw a car at him,” she says.

Sam laughs. “I’ll tell him to apologize again,” he says, and he yawns. “Shit. I’m tired.”

She gets off his bed. “What do you think they’ll do to Jean?”

“I don’t know,” Sam says, and he looks worried about it. “Fire her, at the least. But I’m not sure you can really just be fired from SHIELD.”

“Another casualty,” Wanda mutters, thinking about how they got to this point. The destruction they’ve caused, and the lives they’ve disrupted. Not just her, or Clint. But all the agents. Every mission since the first one. _We have to stop playing with time._

“I’ll see you in the morning,” Sam says, hand on the door. “We’ll start sketching out a plan for Carter. Maybe see what else we can get out of her about her source. See if there’s more information on Clint.”

“Sounds good,” Wanda says, and she goes into her own room. She doesn’t have pajamas, or anything to change into, so she just lays on the cot in her clothes and pulls the blanket over herself. The room is dark, other than the moonlight drifting through the window slats. Wanda reaches out, winding her fingers in it, and thinks about her mother’s song again. She still can’t remember the words.

_I’m losing her_ , Wanda thinks. She already can’t remember the color of her mother’s hair, or the way she smiled. Even Pietro, who was always so sharp in her memory, is starting to blur with time. _I’m losing both of them._ They’re slipping through her fingers, just like the moonlight.

Wanda pulls her hand back and rolls onto her back. _The dead are dead,_ she tells herself fiercely. But Clint is alive. And she won’t let him slip away.

Not this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Playing a little with the timeline, because Peggy Carter wasn't director until about 1970. I promoted her early. 
> 
> Back to Clint next chapter, I promise. 
> 
> Also if you're curious, chap 1 of the Winter Soldier AU I've been working is up! You can find it on my dashboard.


	48. Chapter 47

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mission is a big one. Two teams, two targets to extract. Mikhail wouldn’t tell him who the targets are, but he has a description and a timeline of where his will be. He’s on one team, the Soldier is on the other. They grab the targets, then rendezvous at a predetermined location. Easy. Simple. Like any of the thousands of missions he’s done for SHIELD.
> 
> And yet Clint can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong. Or really, like something is impending. Like he’s heading for a fork in the road, and whatever path he picks will change everything. It’s making him uneasy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you're slightly confused about where this falls in terms of events (I know I confused myself for a bit), things go like this: Wanda meets Clint for rescue --> He sends her back to 2024, where she meets up with Sam --> Wanda and Sam return to 1966 --> Clint and Eliza have their chat in the forest --> this chapter. I apologize for the weirdness. This is what happens when I don't plan things out like I should.

It takes eleven hours to fly to the States.

Clint spends the first three of them sleeping. After Mikhail’s mission briefing, they’d spent hours planning and preparing, and by the time he _finally_ stumbles onto the plane, he’s barely able to keep his eyes open. As soon as they take off and level out, he takes his hand off the controls and falls asleep right there in the co-pilot’s chair.

He wakes up a few hours later from a nightmare, but at least manages to stop himself from screaming. A quick look around shows him that everything is running smoothly, and he relaxes back into his chair.

“Are you alright?”

Clint turns his head. The Soldier is looking at him with something that could probably be called concern. “Yeah,” he says, rubbing his eyes. “Nightmare.”

The Soldier nods. He probably understands better than anyone else.

There are six other soldiers in the back. Two women, four guys. Clint can hear them talking quietly, but he keeps out of it. He doesn’t really want to know them anyway.

The mission is a big one. Two teams, two targets to extract. Mikhail wouldn’t tell him who the targets are, but he has a description and a timeline of where his will be. He’s on one team, the Soldier is on the other. They grab the targets, then rendezvous at a predetermined location. Easy. Simple. Like any of the thousands of missions he’s done for SHIELD.

And yet Clint can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong. Or really, like something is impending. Like he’s heading for a fork in the road, and whatever path he picks will change everything. It’s making him uneasy.

He looks over at the Soldier, who apparently is having none of the quandaries that he’s having. “I have a question,” he says.

“What is it?”

“Do you remember our last mission? With the girl?”

“The red girl.”

“Yeah.” Clint pauses. “Wait, you actually do remember? They didn’t wipe you?”

“Routine maintenance only.” The Soldier sounds relieved about this. Clint doesn’t push it.

“Do you remember what happened after? When we got back? Lukas asked you how the mission went.”

“Mission report. This is standard.”

“Yeah, I know. But you lied to them. About what happened.”

The Soldier flicks his eyes over. “Yes.”

“You know she isn’t dead.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell them?”

The Soldier doesn’t answer for a long time. Clint waits.

“You gave me a word,” he says finally.

“I what?”

“The target called me Barnes. You said it was my name.”

“Because it is.”

“I didn’t know,” the Soldier says quietly. “And you gave it to me. So I lied.”

Clint understands. It’s a thank you, given in the only way the other man knows how. “Well, I appreciated it. A lot. You saved me from something pretty awful.”

The Soldier nods. “I know.” And god help him, he probably does.

They’re quiet for awhile, just an easy silence between them. Then the Soldier says, “I have a question.”

Clint smiles slightly. “Okay.”

“You know my name.”

“Yeah.”

The Soldier’s fists tighten on the controls. “How?”

“We’re friends,” he says. “In the future. We meet in 2016. And after awhile, you end up fighting for us. With SHIELD.”

The Soldier looks stunned. He glances at Clint, then down at his metal arm. His flesh hand comes up and gently touches the red star on it, like he’s in a trance. His voice is barely a whisper. “I get out?”

“Yeah.” Clint clears his throat. “HYDRA tried to take over SHIELD, and you were fighting Steve on one of the carriers. You both fell into the river. You dragged him out. Then you went dark. It took a lot of work to find you again, but he did. He brought you home.”

The Soldier sounds close to tears. “Steve?”

“Steve Rogers. Captain America. You guys were friends.”

“He’s alive?”

“He’s alive.”

The Soldier reaches into his pocket. For an absurd moment Clint thinks he’s going for a gun, but all that comes out is a piece of paper. Faded newspaper. He hands it to Clint.

_CAPTAIN AMERICA IS DEAD._

It’s an article about Cap, and how he drove the plane into the ice. Clearly biased, because the author sounds more than happy about the fact. Clint skims through it. “They showed you this?”

“I found it.”

“Why do you have it?”

“I stole it.” He takes it back and tucks it away. “The Chair doesn’t take everything.”

“You said that before. What does that mean?”

The Soldier glances behind them at the others. “I still have words,” he says. “I keep them. I don’t know how.”

“The brain is complicated,” Clint says. _And they turned yours into a playground._ “What words?”

“Steve. Brooklyn. And now Barnes.” He speaks them reverently. “They tried to take them, but I still know.”

“That’s…” Clint sits back in his chair. “Wow. That’s amazing.”

“I am someone,” the Soldier says, more to himself than anything. He says it like it’s armor.

Clint feels a sense of shame. The Soldier is still fighting, after enduring much longer and worse things than Clint has ever had to. He’s still holding onto something, even if he doesn’t know what that something is. Clint has been babied compared to him, and yet he’s the one giving in already.

_Because you’re weak,_ Loki whispers in the back of his mind. _And you always have been. Why do you think I chose you?_

Clint grits his teeth and forces his mind away. _Come on Barton. Fly the plane._

Another hour slips past, the silence broken only by the occasional murmurs in the back. Clint makes the necessary adjustments and tries to keep his ever-growing anxiety at bay.

“What is the rest of it?” the Soldier asks.

“The rest of what?”

“My name. Is there more?”

“Oh! Yeah. James Buchanan Barnes. But you liked to be called Bucky.”

The Soldier closes his eyes. He looks pained, like the words hurt him, but there’s a sense of peace too. “Bucky,” he repeats softly. “James Buchanan Barnes. _Bucky_.” He says the words like he wants to savor the taste of them, before they go and he’s left with nothing again.

Clint watches this. He knows what it’s like to lose yourself. He learned it as Ronin, and he’s learning it again with Mikhail. Most days he doesn’t know up from down, if he’s SHIELD or HYDRA, if he’s a good guy or a bad guy or something else entirely. But it’s nothing compared to the Soldier. Clint at least has his own name. Has his memories to fall back on, memories he knows are real. The Soldier has had _everything_ taken from him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry all this has happened to you.” Barnes is a good guy. He doesn’t deserve any of this. He never has. “I wish I could do _something_.”

“You gave me a word,” the Soldier murmurs. “That is enough.”

No. It’s not. He can do way more.

And he’s going to.

Clint sets the plane on autopilot and releases the controls. Then he turns to face the Soldier. “Those other words you mentioned,” he says. “Do you know what they mean?”

“No.”

Clint takes a deep breath. “Do you want to?”

The Soldier looks at him. His eyes are full of fear, but also hope, and for a moment, Clint can see Bucky shining through the cracks that HYDRA tried so hard to cover. “Yes,” he says. “ _Yes_.”

They land at midnight after eleven hours of flying, somewhere in upstate New Jersey. Clint helps navigate the jet into an empty field, and they all pile out, carrying bags and various weapons. The safe house is about a half-mile walk from the drop point. Clint moves to be near the Soldier, but one of the others cuts him off. Weber, he thinks the man’s name is. He’s leading the Soldier’s team. He’s also one of the Soldier’s handlers, trained to _deal_ with him in case he goes rogue. Clint doesn’t like the implications of that.

The eight of them troop into the house and set about claiming rooms. The two girls immediately snag the ground-floor room by the bathroom. Weber takes the Soldier and guides him upstairs. Clint moves to follow, but one of the other guys stops him. Fischer. His team leader. “I wouldn’t,” he says. “Trust me.”

Clint steps back and they all go up instead, leaving him alone in the little living room. With a sigh, he sets his bag on the worn-out couch and sets about cleaning his weapons. His usual pre-mission routine.

He’s rubbing wax into the bowstring when Weber comes back down the stairs. Clint looks up at the sound of footsteps. They hold each other’s gaze for a moment, then Weber jerks his head towards the door. The anxious feeling in the pit of his stomach swells, but Clint gets off the couch and follows him out.

They walk around the side of the house, out of view of the windows. “What do you want?” Clint asks.

“You need to back off the Asset,” Weber says, turning to face him. “Now.”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” Clint says.

“I saw you whispering with it in the plane. Like two little peas in a pod. I don’t think your master would be too pleased to hear that.”

“Fuck off,” Clint says. “Before I shoot you.”

Weber grins. “Ooh. Touched a nerve, didn’t I?”

He steps closer, crowding Clint against the wall of the house. Clint sees a thousand ways out of the move, most of which end with Weber incapacitated, but he doesn’t really feel like that would be the wisest thing to do. So he steps back accordingly, and lets himself be boxed in.

“Keep your distance,” Weber says. “It’s here to do a job. I’m here to make sure it _and_ you behave accordingly. And if you try feeding it some sob story about how you can use this time to elope together like happy lovers, then I’m going to have to stop it, and you.”

Clint matches him glare for glare. “We’re both part of the mission,” he says quietly. “I can talk to _him_ about anything I think is necessary. If you have a problem with that, then call back to base. See if I care.”

Weber smirks. “Do the mission, then. But if you have something to say to the asset, then you’re going to say it in front of all of us from now on. No more secret chats. No more whispering. No more sneaky plans to run away together.” He leans closer. “But just between you and me? I _want_ you to run. I’ve got a thousand ideas of what to do when I catch you.”

Even closer. There’s barely an inch separating them now, and his mouth is right next to Clint’s ear. “I worked with Natov, you know. Before you killed him? We were friends. And he told me _all_ about you. How tough you think you are.” His hand slips down, cupping over Clint’s groin. “And how pretty you look when you’re all tied up and struggling.”

And just like that, Clint is back in the room with Natov and the others, chained up and hallucinating and surrounded by men who want nothing more than to destroy him. He closes his eyes, trying to refocus. _Stop it. It happened to someone else. Put it away._

“Yeah, that’s right,” Weber says, squeezing Clint over his pants. He leans back enough to see the expression on Clint’s face. “So behave yourself. You might be part of the mission, but you’re not part of our team. And I’m just _itching_ for an excuse to get you on your knees.”

He squeezes one more time and then walks off, going back inside the house. Clint sags against the wall. It’s warm outside, but he’s shivering hard, the cold from the cell enveloping him. The memory plays over and over, it won’t go back in its box, won’t fit in the fractured space he made for it—

_spread his legs you’re going to like this we’re going to_ make _you like it this is happening and there’s nothing you can do about it nothing nothing nothing_

There’s a soft keening sound, and Clint realizes after a moment that its coming from himself. He sinks to his knees and puts his hands over his ears. He’s gasping for air but there isn't any coming in, he can't see anything in front of him but spots and whiteness and—

And Natasha.

She’s there, like she never left, and there’s a gentle smile on her lips. He stares at her as she takes his hand in hers and says in a firm voice, “One.”

“One,” he echoes.

“Two.”

“T-two.”

He stutters and stumbles over the words, but his breathing slowly evens, and by the time he says “Ten” it comes out more or less normal. He says it again, “Ten,” and looks up at her.

She’s gone. His hand is extended into the night air, like he’s reaching for something invisible. He can still feel the pressure of her skin against his.

“Ten,” he says again, blinking away the tears. “Please?”

She doesn’t come back.

Clint stays out a little longer, kneels there until most of his pieces are back together. Then he takes a deep breath, stands up, and goes back inside the house. Everyone is in their rooms, doors shut tight. They never set up a watch, he realizes. Or the others did, and this is their way of telling him that he’s it.

“Assholes,” he mutters, and then realizes that he’d never be able to sleep anyway. Not with someone he doesn’t trust at his back. Especially not with multiple someones. So he takes the blanket from the couch, wraps it around his shoulders, and goes back to waxing his bowstring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't really remember how to use it (and was never super active in the first place tbh), but I revived my [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/feedmecookiesnow) from 2013. Feel free to come yell at me there!


	49. Chapter 48

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The bow slips from his hand and clatters to the floor as he recognizes them. His heart, so calm a second ago, starts beating wildly like it’s trying to burst its way out of his chest. “What…” he starts, and then stops, because he doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know what to do. Of all the things he was prepared for, this was not one of them.

Fischer is the first one to stumble down the stairs in the morning. He has a bleary-eyed expression that changes to surprise when he sees Clint on the couch. “Didn’t you sleep?”

“Kept watch,” Clint says, gesturing to outside. “It’s fine. I’m not tired.”

“Whatever.” Fischer pulls open the fridge. “As long as you can do your job tonight, I don’t care.” He takes out a carton of eggs. “Hungry?”

He’s actually a fairly decent cook, moving around the kitchen with ease while he makes the biggest batch of scrambled eggs Clint’s ever seen in his life. He even finds a pack of bacon, which he throws on a frying pan. “You’re in charge of this,” he says to Clint. “You ever make bacon?”

“I’m American,” Clint says. “Of course I’ve made bacon.”

Fischer nods. “I wouldn’t go throwing that around,” he says. “We all know, but it’s not something you want to remind them of. Especially not Weber.” He pauses. “He talked to you last night?”

“Yes.” _If you can call ~~rape~~ DON’T SAY IT threats a talk. _

“Good. If he hadn’t, I would’ve. You’re not here to be friends with the Asset, you’re here to be a sniper for me. Leave it alone and focus on the mission.”

Clint bristles a little. “He’s a person, you know,” he says sharply. “Stop calling him _it_.”

He’s not exactly sure how it happens, but the next thing he knows, he’s pressed up against a wall with a knife to his throat. Fischer is inches from him, eyes cold and jaw set. “I don’t think you understand how things work around here,” he says, and Clint does his best to hold extremely still. “So let me make something very clear. It’s not a person. It’s a weapon. It’s not any more special than your bow, or this knife, or the fucking plane that we used to get here. It does what we tell it to do, and then we put it away until the next time we need it.”

He lets go and steps back. Clint slowly peels himself off the wall. There’s a trickle of warmth down his throat, and he gingerly probes at it. His fingers come away bloody.

“I don’t want you talking to it,” Fischer says. “Any mission-vital information you think it needs to know can go through me first. Otherwise, you keep your distance. Got it?”

“Yeah,” Clint says hoarsely. “I got it.”

“Good,” Fischer says. He smiles. “So. You good with making bacon?”

Clint nods, and they carry on like nothing happened. The smell of it all eventually wakes the rest of the crew, who all pile into the kitchen. They bicker about plates and seating arrangements and move among each other with an ease that makes his heart hurt. He used to have this, once upon a time.

_“All deference to the man who wouldn’t be king, but it’s rigged.”_

_“You bet your ass.”_

_“Steve, he said a bad language word!”_

His arm grazes the edge of the frying pan and the resulting flash of pain makes him hiss sharply, drawing him back into the present. He forces down the bitter taste of loss and turns on the cold water in the sink. _It’s over. You don’t have that anymore. Stop dwelling on it._

There’s a little bit left by the time he gets around to eating. He fills up his plate and stands over by the sink, watching the others laugh and talk. It really does feel like a mirror into the past—if not for the Soldier looming silently by the staircase and the fact that the conversation is spanning multiple languages.

He finishes eating and washes his plate out of habit, not really thinking about it. Fischer wanders up behind him while he’s rinsing it and claps a hand on his shoulder. “Thanks for volunteering,” he says.

Clint jumps a little at the touch. “Volunteering for what?”

“Clean-up,” one of the girls says. She flashes him an unfriendly smile. The rest watch, an air of amusement among them.

It’s ritual hazing. He’s the new guy. No point in getting worked up about it. “Sure,” he says after a moment. “Bring them over.”

“Why don’t you come and get them?” Weber asks. “You volunteered, after all.”

Clint bites his tongue. “Fine,” he says, and he gathers up all the dishes, feeling vaguely like a barmaid.

The group drifts apart while he works, some disappearing back upstairs. The Soldier sits at the table next to Weber, who is building an elaborate card house. Clint finishes putting away the last plate and surveys the kitchen, making sure everything is in place.

“You make a good housewife,” Weber comments, not looking at him.

Clint ignores him and walks back over to his bow. He should really go fire a couple shots, just to test it. He’s used this one before—he made sure to ask Mikhail specifically for it—but he wants to make sure everything is kosher for tonight. The last thing he needs to do is fuck something up and lose Mikhail’s trust for future missions.

“Nothing to say?” Weber taunts. “You were so full of words last night. Did I scare them out of you?”

Clint bites back a response and picks up his bow, slinging the quiver over his shoulder. _It’s not worth it, it’s not worth it…_

Weber steps into his path. The rage that always seems to be simmering beneath flares up, and the heat of it flashes through Clint, almost choking him. Weber smirks, stance loose and ready, just waiting. “Well?”

Behind him, the Soldier meets his eyes, then gives an almost imperceptible shake of his head. A warning. Clint thinks about the promise that Weber made last night, and forces his fists to relax. _Actions have consequences._ Weber is just another bully in a long line of them. No need to get worked up about it and bring something down on himself. He’s on a mission, he shouldn’t be letting emotions get in the way of the job anyway. “I’m going outside,” he says, voice flat. “Excuse me.”

He steps past Weber and marches out the front door. He walks all the way down to the little creek, some hundred and fifty yards away. Close enough to be within viewing distance, far enough that he won’t be tempted to put an arrow through Weber’s fat head.

The two girls are sitting on a rock by the bank, eating apples from the tree above them. They glare at Clint as he gets close but he ignores them. He strings his bow and nocks an arrow, then shoots it at a tree. It sticks with a satisfying thud. Something in his chest loosens at the sound, and for the first time in hours, he feels like he can breath. Archery has always been his. It’s been his since he was a kid and picked up Buck Chisholm’s too-heavy bow for the first time. He’d felt the weight of the wood in his hand, and the whisper of a feather on his cheek, and he’d known immediately that he wanted nothing else. His only true love, Laura used to tease him. She wasn’t far off the mark.

He looses another arrow, and then another. It’s not difficult, but it’s calming, and he loses himself in the repetitive actions. It comes as a surprise when his quiver is empty. He jogs over to the arrows and pulls them out of the tree.

“Impressive,” says one of the girls as he comes back. She takes a bite of her apple.

Clint shrugs. “Just practicing.”

“I’m sure the trees are very frightened,” the other one says. Dana? Donna? He can’t recall her name. “Is that all you can shoot at? Trees?”

“I can hit anything,” he says, nocking an arrow.

The black-haired girl smirks like she doesn’t believe him. She doesn’t look like Nat in the slightest, but the expression is painfully familiar. “Is that so?”

She plucks the apple out of the other girl’s hand and tosses it high. Clint watches it fly, tumbling end over end. He lets it go for a count of three, then draws and releases in a single breath. The arrow catches the apple and nails it to a tree between their heads. “Yeah,” Clint says, lowering the bow. “I said, _anything_.”

She looks suitably impressed. “That _is_ very good,” she says.

The other girl is less pleased. “You stole my apple!”

“It’s an apple tree, Ana. Pick another one.” She stands up—Darya, Clint suddenly remembers, that’s her name— and walks over. Saunters, really. The way she moves reminds him of a video he once saw, about a lioness stalking her prey. He swallows nervously and tightens his grip on the bow.

“Interesting weapon,” she says once she gets close enough. “Why use a bow?”

“Quieter than a gun,” he says. “I can sneak up on people.”

“Mmm.” She runs a hand over his arm, squeezing on his biceps. “You must be strong, to pull such a heavy weight.”

He shifts away from her hand. “It just takes practice.”

She smiles. Touches him again. “Am I making you uncomfortable?”

“If I say yes, will you stop?”

The smile gets a predatory edge. “No.”

Clint grits his teeth and takes a full step away from her. She laughs.

“Darya, leave the poor boy alone,” Ana says from the rock. “Come sit. We can watch. You can look at his arms from over here.”

Darya pats his arm. “Don’t worry. I know you and Elizaveta are together.”

“We’re not _together_ ,” he says, a little taken aback. “We don’t—sometimes—I’m not—“

She laughs at his stammering. “Hush. I’m just having fun with you. You’re like a little bird, you know. So easily frightened.”

_Ptichka_. Little bird. _I used to be a hawk,_ he wants to say, but he swallows down his words and nocks an arrow.

“In any case,” she says. “If you find yourself growing bored of her, I am…available.” She grabs his face in both her hands and kisses him hard, then pulls back. He stands there, slightly dazed, as she strolls back over to her friend with a little wave.

He feels like he should be flattered. She’s beautiful, all dark hair and curves. She practically oozes seduction. And yet Clint wants to dip in the creek and scrub the memory of her kiss off his lips. It’s bad enough that he’s fucking Elizaveta. He doesn’t need to add to his guilt pile.

He starts shooting again. He gets in three more rounds before Fischer comes jogging up. “Time to get ready,” he says to all of them. “We’re leaving in an hour.” He looks at the arrow-filled tree. “Save the rest for tonight, big shot.”

Clint doesn’t argue. He just goes to retrieve his arrows and follows Fischer back to the house.

“You should be careful with Darya,” Fischer says as they walk back. “She’ll chew you up and spit you out like you’re nothing.”

Clint winces. “She kissed _me_. I don’t want anything to do with her.”

“I don’t think she really cares what you want.” He leans closer. “Trust me. I’ve been there. It’s better to just face her head-on like a storm, then pick up the pieces when she’s gone.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Clint says, breaking off as they get to the house. He goes back over to the couch and adds a couple more arrows into his stock, then straps on his thigh holster. There’s a general hustle and bustle about the house as everyone gathers up weapons and suits up. Clint breaks down his bow with practiced movements and carefully tucks it and the arrows into his case. He’d do just about anything for his collapsible bow. He misses the ease of setting it up, just _click snap snap_ and boom, he had a weapon. This way is just so…old-school.

They start to gather in the kitchen about half an hour later. The plan for his team, as far as Clint knows, is to infiltrate a party that his target is attending. But when they all gather, it looks like everybody except him is dressed up. “Change of plans,” Fischer says quietly at his quizzical look. “Both targets will be in the same place, so we’re all going to the party. Your position hasn’t changed.”

He feels a little out of place in his stealth outfit, but he’s not going to be joining them, it makes sense. His job is to stay out of sight, monitor the party, and take out security if needed. He prefers that, honestly. Black tie events aren’t his thing.

“Alright,” Fischer says. “Everyone got their radios? Anyone unclear on their task?” He looks specifically at Clint, who feels slightly offended. He’s new to the team, but he’s not exactly a rookie on his first mission. He’s been working for SHIELD since his twenties. He knows how to run an op.

“I got it,” he says, holding up his earpiece. He tucks it into his ear. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Trust me, I don’t want to.”

“Team one is with me,” Weber says. “Team two is Fischer’s. We get in, get the targets, get out. No lingering, no mistakes. This is a Priority mission. We have to do it right.” He points out the window. “There’ll be transportation here for us within the hour. Be ready.”

“I need to redo my hair,” Darya says. She’s wearing a long, black gown that looks absolutely stunning on her. Scary as she is, he can’t help but stare a little. She’s _gorgeous_. Her hair is pinned up in a kind of elegant yet charming bun, and her makeup walks the perfect line between subtle and sultry. Her red lips break into a smile as she sees his appraising gaze, and he quickly looks away.

“Your hair is fine,” Fischer says with exasperation. “You _always_ do this. You fuss too much.”

Privately, Clint agrees. She looks amazing, and he doesn’t see the problem. But she dismisses his comments with a “Bah!” and a waved hand. Then she drags Ana into the bathroom with her.

“If you make us wait, I will kill you,” Fischer calls to her. The door slams shut.

Clint goes back to the couch and sits down to wait. After a moment, Fischer comes over. “You’re good on your part?”

“I’m fine,” Clint says, a little annoyed. “This isn’t my first job, okay? I know what I’m doing. I’ve been doing ops pretty much my whole life.”

“These will be SHIELD agents,” he says. “Or others. I don’t want anyone on this team to get hurt because you weren’t able to do what needs to be done.”

Clint drums his fingers on the case. “Don’t _worry_ about it. I’ll do my job.”

“See that you do.” He looks at Clint. “I told Mikhail I’d give him a full report. That includes good and bad things.”

“I’ll do my job,” Clint repeats. It’s all he can say. Really, he’s hoping everything goes according to the plan, and then he won’t have to kill anyone. But if it comes down to it…he rubs his thumb over the case and tries not to think too hard. This is the bed he made. Now he gets to lie in it.

Outside, a van rumbles up. It’s an old van, and he has to bite back a laugh once he gets a good look at it. It looks like the Scooby-Doo mystery machine. The only thing it’s missing is the paint job.

“What’s funny?” Fischer asks, looking at his face.

“Old joke,” Clint says, although Scooby-Doo didn’t air until 1969, so technically it’s a new joke. He has no idea _why_ he knows that, but he won a trivia contest with it once, so he’s keeping that bit of information around.

They all situate themselves inside the van. Clint ends up in the far backseat, crammed next to Darya, who immediately takes the opportunity to put a hand on his thigh. “Close quarters,” she purrs at him. He doesn’t see any changes to her hair, but she’s apparently pleased with it now, so what does he know. “Hope you don’t mind.”

Clint clenches his jaw. “It’s fine.”

“Yes,” she says, moving her hand up and down. “Yes, it is.”

She does that all the way to the rendezvous point, by which time Clint is fighting both arousal and guilt with equal strength. He practically flees the car when they stop. She laughs at his little scramble to get out.

“Get in position,” Fischer says to the rest of them. “Barton, with me.”

The party is being held at some luxury hotel courtyard. Fischer takes Clint into the hotel and up to a room on the second floor, where he’ll have a view over everything. “Your radio on?”

“Yeah,” he says, touching his earpiece.

“Okay. You’re our eyes up here. Call out anything suspicious if you see it.” He crosses his arms. “Questions?”

“I _got_ it,” Clint says. “Mikhail wouldn’t have let me come if he didn’t think I could handle it.”

Fischer snorts. “I’m not concerned about your skill set. I’m concerned about you seeing old SHIELD friends and deciding not to do what we brought you for.”

_Well none of my friends are born yet, so I don’t think you have anything to worry about._ But of course he can’t say that, so he just shakes his head. “Guess there’s only one way for you to find out, isn’t there?”

“This is your only shot with me,” Fischer says. “With the exception of the Asset, those people down there are my friends. You aren’t. If you endanger them in _any_ way, I will not hesitate to put a bullet in your head and leave your corpse to rot.”

“I hear you,” Clint says, stringing his bow. “Trust me. Message is clear.”

“Good,” Fischer says, and he points at the balcony. “Be ready. Stay on comms. When we’re done, you meet us out back. If you’re not there on time, we’ll leave without you.”

Clint doubts that, but he nods anyway. Fischer leaves without another word. Clint finishes setting up, then flicks on the TV for fun. The party won’t start until sundown. He might as well kill some time. The screen fuzzes, then coalesces in a grainy view of Jeopardy. It’s not quite what he’s used to, but it’s close, and the familiarity of it is comforting. Certainly better than stewing in his own thoughts. He arranges the chair so he can see both it and the courtyard.

“From sports,” says the announcer. “Number of fingers needed to draw a bow.”

The girl rings in. “What is two?”

_What is three,_ Clint corrects, at the same time as the announcer.

“These words announce the start of the Indianapolis 500.”

_What is, gentlemen, start your engines?_

“This sport allows the players to throw bombs.”

_What is football?_

He keeps guessing along, getting them more wrong than right, until the sun sets and the party starts kicking into gear. Then he leaves the TV screen and moves over to the window. He cuts opens it and cuts the screen away. It’s a nice view, for sure. Another benefit of his _enhancements_ —much sharper vision. As much as he hates the method of getting it, Clint does like that little addition. He can see every detail of what’s happening below, no binoculars needed. It’s handy. Horrifying, but handy.

The comm crackles to life in his ear, the team confirming their various positions. Clint checks in when prompted and goes back to scanning. He spots the security details immediately; they’re too stiff and formal to be anything else. The team is easy to spot as well, but only because he’s looking for them. He finds Darya standing by the bar, and Weber next to the door. The Soldier is standing by the edge of the fountain, looking far too out of place to be an easy-going party guest. Fischer murmurs something to him and presses a drink into his hand. The Soldier takes it uncomfortably and continues to look like an awkward freshman at a college party.

“Look alive,” Ana says. She’s positioned at the hotel front, monitoring for arrivals. “We’ve got a car coming in.”

“Ours?” Fischer asks.

There’s a long pause, and then, “No. Two others.”

Clint relaxes a little. Maybe if he’s really lucky, the targets won’t come at all.

_Right, because you’ve been_ so _lucky this far._ He should face facts: he used up all his luck in the battle with Thanos. He’s officially out of luck for the rest of his sorry life, however long or short it ends up being.

The door to the courtyard swings open, drawing his attention. Two people step inside. One a dark-haired woman in a stunning blue dress, the other a dark-skinned man in a black suit and tie. They step into the crowd warily, eyes up and searching.

The bow slips from his hand and clatters to the floor as he recognizes them. His heart, so calm a second ago, starts beating wildly like it’s trying to burst its way out of his chest. “What…” he starts, and then stops, because he doesn’t know what to say. Doesn’t know what to do. Of all the things he was prepared for, this was _not_ one of them. Clint stares at the ghosts from his past and tries to take a breath, to move, to do _anything_.

_It’s another Jeopardy answer,_ Clint thinks, and he fights back a hysterical laugh.

These party guests are not supposed to be here.

_Who are Sam Wilson and Wanda Maximoff?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AYYYYY the cavalry has arrived! 
> 
> I'm on [tumblr!](https://feedmecookiesnow.tumblr.com/) Someone did an anon ask for more details on Lukas and Mikhail, if you're interested in reading my answer! Also currently taking writing prompts, as I'm trying to hone my short story skills, so feel free to send me requests (you can comment here or there).


	50. Chapter 49

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint drops his bow again and grips his head with both hands. He’s sure he looks as crazy as he feels, but he doesn’t know what else to do. There’s too many options here, too many ways it can go bad. He got lucky last time, getting Wanda alone in the house to send her back. It’ll never happen like that again. And he doesn’t want to kill them, he _doesn’t_ , they’re his friends and they’re just trying to help—

They’re looking for him. What else would they be here for? They stay together and look all the world like regular party-goers, but he can see the swivel of their heads and the calculating gazes. They’re definitely looking for him.

Which begs the question, how did they know he was going to be here at all? _He_ didn’t know he was going to be here until a few days ago. So either they came back after the last incident and got their hands on the information somehow, or else whatever happens here changed the future so much that they came back to change it. Which is technically a paradox in and of itself, and he rubs his eyebrows in an effort to fend off the headache he feels coming on. _Fucking time travel._

This is too much. He _just_ made his peace with the fact that he’s never going home. And now they’re here, and Wanda is in danger _again_ , and he doesn’t want to break her heart a second time.

“God fucking dammit,” he mutters, picking up the bow from the floor.

“You see something, Barton?” Fischer asks.

“No,” Clint says quickly. “Nothing yet.”

He watches Wanda and Sam. They stay on the fringes, keeping an eye on the the other guests, drifting over by where Darya is flirting at the bar. Wanda’s hair is dark brown again, like it was when they first met, and he hopes it’s enough to keep the Soldier from recognizing her instantly. He _is_ looking at her, but it’s more of a calculated interest rather than total recognition.

Clint hesitates, unsure what to do. He’s supposed to stay up here—maybe if he does that, they’ll _leave_ —but he’s worried about the way Darya is looking at Sam like she wants to eat him alive.

“Heads up,” Ana says. “Targets are walking in.”

Darya loses interest in Sam and glances over at the door. It opens and the two targets step in. Man and woman, clearly together. They look just like their pictures. Clint grimaces and tightens his grip on the bow. The show is about to start. As much as it makes his skin crawl, he has to do his job. If he doesn’t, and they report that to Mikhail, he’s a goner. He still doesn’t have an exact plan for taking out the time machine, but he knows that being left in a dark cell to rot isn’t going to help him at _all._

_But if Wanda and Sam get in the way…_

Clint grits his teeth. He _told_ her not to come back. This is exactly why.

_You’re not going to shoot them,_ a voice says in the back of his mind. _They’re your friends._

“They’re going to mess it up,” he argues back, voice barely a whisper. “I have a job to do—“

_You’re not going to shoot them,_ it insists.

“I can’t let them get in the way—“

_You’re not going to shoot them._

He slams his fist into the wall. “SHUT UP!”

“Barton,” Fischer says on comms. “What the fuck is going on up there?”

Clint drops his bow again and grips his head with both hands. He’s sure he looks as crazy as he feels, but he doesn’t know what else to do. There’s too many options here, too many ways it can go bad. He got lucky last time, getting Wanda alone in the house to send her back. It’ll never happen like that again. And he doesn’t want to kill them, he _doesn’t_ , they’re his friends and they’re just trying to help—

“Barton!”

Fischer says it louder. Loud enough that Sam, standing nearby, turns his head sharply in recognition. Fischer sees it, eyes narrowing. He moves away from Sam and says, more quietly, “Whatever the fuck your problem is, it needs to stop right fucking now. You hear me?”

“Fischer,” Darya chimes in. “The targets are in position.”

“I hear you,” he says. “Barton. Security. Now. Start with the ones next to me.”

Clint picks up his bow. Draws an arrow and aims, right at Sam.

Fuck. _Fuck_.

He can’t do it.

He _won’t_ do it.

_Fuck it_.

“No,” Clint says, and he lowers the bow. “No. I won’t do it. They’re my friends.”

“Goddammit,” Fischer growls. “I knew it. I _fucking_ knew it. Darya?”

“On it,” Darya says, and she starts to move, hand pulling a small handgun out of her clutch. Clint sees it in slow motion—the smooth glide of her hand, the way her hand wraps around the grip, the cold way she raises it.

An arrow sprouts from her throat suddenly, and she chokes, dropping the gun. There’s a few scattered screams as her blood sprays over the crystal glasses, turning the white tablecloths crimson. Darya collapses, somehow beautiful even as the life pulses from her.

“Darya!” Fischer screams.

Clint vaults over the balcony. The two-story drop is nothing to him, not anymore, and he hits the ground in a controlled roll, drawing another arrow as he pops up to his feet. He scans the crowd as quickly as he can, cataloguing threats.

Chaos bursts around him, like he’s the epicenter of an explosion. There’s more screaming, and shouting from security, and the angry yells of the team in his ear. Fischer is on the ground next to Darya. His hands are covered in her blood. He looks up as Clint lands, and his eyes narrow with rage and pain.

“You fucking traitor!” He pushes up to his feet, starts to run at him. Clint looses an arrow right into his head.

Gunfire erupts. He draws again, turning, and takes out Ana, who is running towards him with a furious expression. He takes cover behind the fountain as someone else starts shooting at him—one of the two he doesn’t know. Clint takes a deep breath and when there’s a pause in the bullets, he stands up and fires.

His brain is in battle mode, sharp for the first time in days. He sees _everything_ in almost painful clarity. The SHIELD security team is down, having been taken out first by the team. The rest of the guests are running and screaming. He can see Wanda and Sam among them, directing the scared party-goers to safety.

There’s a sudden sharp pain in his arm, a burning, and he looks down to see bright red blood welling from a hole in it. “Shit,” he says, gritting his teeth against the pain. But he’s been shot before, and this is nothing. He looses another arrow, hitting the other HYDRA guy, and ducks behind the fountain again. He tries to to think. There were eight total. Both girls are down, the two he didn’t know, and Fischer. That leave him, the Soldier, and—

“Barton!”

He looks up in time to see Weber fire his gun. The bullet rips through Clint’s other shoulder and he drops the bow, staggering to his knees. It _hurts_ , a conflagration compared to the candle flame of the other wound, and he presses a hand to it as involuntary tears prick his eyes.

Weber aims again. His expression is dead calm, but Clint can see the rage in his eyes. “You _coward_ ,” he says, aiming at him. “I should put a bullet in your head right here.”

“Why don’t you?” Clint snarls. “Save me the trouble.”

“No,” Weber says. “That’s too easy.” He motions to the Soldier, who woodenly moves over to where Clint is. “Get him up. We’re getting out of here.”

The Soldier gently pulls Clint to his feet and examines the wound. “Keep pressure on it,” he says softly. “It went all the way through. You will be fine.”

“Stop talking to him,” Weber says. “We’re leaving, now, before this gets even more fucked up.” He motions with the gun. “Move, or I’ll shoot you in the knee and make it carry you.”

Clint takes a hesitant step forward, mind spinning through scenarios. He could grab a gun from somewhere and shoot Weber, but he’s not sure how the Soldier will react to that, if there’s some kind of programming in his head that will take over with the death of his handler. He once overheard a conversation between Steve and Bucky about trigger words, and it’s not something he wants to deal with while he’s wounded like this. But he can’t just placidly go along, either, because he’s a dead man the moment they set foot back in Germany. They’ll torture him until he reveals Wanda and Sam. He’ll be punished, and then Mikhail will leave him to die. He has no doubts about it. And the Soldier will be punished, for lying about Wanda. They’ll put him in the chair and take his words away. Clint can’t do that to him.

Which means his best shot at surviving is running away. But he can’t run away, because there’s a fucking tracker implanted in him somewhere. Anywhere he runs to, they’ll find him.

“There’s no way out,” he says quietly, voice breaking, and the Soldier’s hand tightens briefly on his arm.

“Yes,” he murmurs. “There is.”

Clint looks at him, confusion overlaying the helplessness screaming in his mind. “What?”

“Stop!” calls a familiar voice from behind him, and they turn around to see Wanda. The courtyard is mostly empty now. She’s standing next to Sam in the chaos of overturned tables and shattered glass. Red power is sparking all around her, like a fiery aura. Even her eyes are tinged with it. She looks terrifying. She looks _beautiful_.

“Stop,” Wanda says again, raising her hands. The power flares brighter. “Let him go.”

Weber snorts. “Hell no,” he says, and he raises his gun.

The world slows down again. Clint sees the gun come up, sees Weber take his aim. He starts to move forward, but he knows it’ll be too late, he’s not going to get there in time—

The Soldier moves faster. He steps forward, right in the line of fire, and raises his silver arm. The bullet bounces off his palm and ricochets away. Weber stares at him. The Soldier steps forward again and yanks the gun away from him in a single smooth motion. Then he fires _onetwothree_ , and Weber drops to the ground like a puppet with his strings cut.

“Go,” the Soldier says to Clint.

Clint stares at Weber’s body. _Guess I was wrong about programming._

“ _Go_ ,” the Soldier repeats, turning to face him. He waves his silver hand at the destruction. “I will take care of this. But you need to leave.”

Wanda lets her power fade down. “Come on,” she says to Sam. His leg is bleeding, and he’s sweating with pain, but he takes her arm and limps over.

“Clint,” Sam says as they get close. “It’s good to see you.”

The words sound odd to Clint’s ears, and he has to pause for a moment to make the mental language switch. “I wish I could say the same,” he finally gets out, eyes on Wanda. “Why did you come back? I told you not to.”

“I wasn’t going to _leave_ you here.” Wanda helps Sam sit on the edge of the fountain and turns to him with fury in her eyes. “How could you even ask me to do that?”

“I was trying to keep you safe,” Clint says. He presses his shoulder harder and steps back from her. “I told you, Wanda. You can’t fix everything.”

“And _you_ can?” she challenges. “You think that sacrificing yourself like some tragic hero is going to fix things? Natasha gave her life so you could be with your family, Clint. Is _this_ what you’re going to do with her gift?”

“What? No, I didn’t, I can’t—“

“No,” she says, power spiking through her fingers again. “ _Shut_ _up_ and listen to me. When I was hiding from my mistakes, you came and got me. Do you remember what you said?”

“Wanda, I—“

“You said, ‘if you want to mope, you can go to high school. You want to make amends, you get off your ass.’” She fixes him with a narrow glare. “Get off your ass, Clint. We’re here to help you. You’re going to let us.”

“But I can’t go with you,” Clint says. “You don’t understand, I _told_ them—“

“We know what you told them,” Sam says, limping to his feet. “And we’re taking care of it. We’re working with Carter, we’ve got a plan in place. It’s happening right now.” He steps forward, hands out and face pleading. “You don’t have to do it alone anymore, Clint. Okay? You’ve got backup now.”

“What’s happening?” Clint demands. “Who’s Carter?”

“Peggy Carter. She’s running SHIELD now. We set up a plan with her. There’s a team hitting the base right now. We coordinated it with what’s happening here. They’re going to destroy all the research and blow up the whole damn place.” He holds out a GPS watch in his hand. “We have it all set up, Clint. All you have to do is put this on and come home with us.”

“I…” Clint stares at the watch. It can’t be that easy. It _can’t_ be. “How’d you find the base?”

“I got the information last time,” Wanda says. “And there’s a highly placed informant there that passes things to SHIELD. That’s how we knew you were coming here. We’ve been waiting for weeks.” She steps closer to him. Close enough to put her hand on his arm. Close enough that he can see the tears in her eyes.

His own eyes burn. He’s cold, and light-headed, and he’s a little alarmed about how much blood he’s losing. He doesn’t have the strength to push her away.

“It can’t be that easy,” he tells her.

“It wasn’t,” Sam says. “Nothing about this has been easy. But the cavalry’s here, Clint, and it’s time for you to come back home. Laura’s waiting for you.”

Clint looks at the Soldier. “But…what about him?”

“He can’t come,” Sam says, and he looks sad. “You know how it is, Clint. He has to stay.”

The Soldier shakes his head. “It’s fine,” he says. “Don’t worry about me.”

“But they’ll hurt you.” Clint sways a little on his feet. “They’ll put you in the chair and take your _words_ , Bucky, I can’t—“

“Steve finds me,” he says, cutting Clint off. “That’s what you said. You said Steve finds me, and I come to SHIELD. Were you lying?”

“No.”

“So I’ll wait for him,” the Soldier says. “I have someone coming.” There’s pain in his eyes, but he stands his ground. “Your someone is here. It’s time for you to go. You don’t belong here.”

Clint’s vision blurs with tears. “I’m sorry,” he says softly. “I wish I could help.”

“You did,” the Soldier says, and he offers Clint a small, sad smile. “More than you know, I think.”

Sam steps closer. “Clint. You’re hurt, man. Let me take you back.”

“SHIELD,” Clint says. “This SHIELD, I mean, won’t they need help? Shouldn’t we…” He sways again, fighting the urge to curl up on the ground and go to sleep. He heals fast, but it still takes time, and the shoulder wound is a nasty one.

Wanda nods. “I’m staying behind,” she says. “I’ll help Carter wrap things up, then follow you later.”

“I should–“ Clint starts, but she cuts him off with a sharp glare. “Okay.”

He reaches out and takes the GPS from Sam with his bloody hand. He can’t make it clip around his wrist, and after a moment, Wanda does it for him. “Be careful,” he tells her, and she offers him a small smile. “I mean it.”

“I’ll see you at home,” she says, and Clint revels in the sound of the word. Home. Could he really be going home? Is it really over?

He should be happy. He should be jumping for joy or dancing or something. He knows that he should _want_ to go.

But he doesn’t.

How could he? Even if the base and the research is destroyed, and the future kept relatively intact, how could he possibly go back to what he was? He doesn’t fit into his old life anymore. He doesn’t know how to be a SHIELD agent, or a husband, or a father. Not anymore. His world has been so narrowed that all he knows how to do is what Mikhail wants.

_He’s gonna be so disappointed in me,_ Clint thinks, and then he starts laughing, because it’s such an absurd idea. He’s been tortured and twisted around himself so much that he’s honestly worried about _disappointing_ the very man who did it to him.

Sam looks at him with concern, and Clint cuts off the hysterical laughter with a sharp sound that might be a sob. “I’m sorry,” he says to all three of them. “I just…this is hard.”

“It is,” Sam agrees. “But that’s why we’re here.” He puts his hand over the button on Clint’s wrist. “Look. If you really, honestly want us to, we’ll let you stay.”

“Sam!” Wanda says, but he holds up a hand.

“I know you feel responsible,” he continues, “for everything that’s happened. I know you stayed because you felt like you had to. But I need you to believe me when I say that you don’t. And you especially don’t have to do it alone.”

“People have died because me,” Clint says. His voice breaks. “ _Good_ people, Sam. I keep losing them, like I lost Nat, I didn’t want anyone else to—“

“You haven’t lost _us_ ,” Sam says. “And you’re not going to.” He steps closer and draws Clint into an hug, mindful of the injured shoulder. “Sacrificing yourself isn’t going to bring anyone back this time. You want to make amends for it? Go on living, and remember what they died for. That’s the best thing you can do.”

Wanda comes up to his other side, and then Clint is in the middle of a three-way embrace. They stand that way for an eternity, wrapped in each other’s arms until Clint feels something in himself give way. “Okay,” he finally croaks. “Okay. I’ll go.”

They break apart. Wanda swipes a hand over her face and tries for a smile. “I’ll be right there,” she says. “I promise.”

Clint looks over at the Soldier. “Tell Lukas I said to go to hell,” he says. “And don’t let them take your words.”

The Soldier smiles, and there’s a hint of Bucky in the expression. “They’re welcome to try,” he says.

Clint taps the GPS once, and the nanotech overlays his clothes, turning them into the travel suit. “I don’t know about this,” he says to Sam. “Last time I went time traveling, it didn’t go so well.”

“That’s alright,” Sam says, grinning at him. “You’re with me now. Just close your eyes and make a wish. I’ll do the rest.”

Clint closes his eyes and taps the watch a second time. There’s a crackling in his ears, a small _pop_ , a sensation of falling, falling, falling—

Then his feet hit the ground on the machine, and he stumbles, barely managing to keep his balance. Sam grabs his arm to steady him as the helmet flips open. Clint looks around, barely daring to hope.

The time machine. The massive windows. The obnoxiously large SHIELD logo on the opposite wall.

“We’re back,” he says faintly. “I…”

“Holy shit,” says another voice. “You got him. You actually _got_ him.”

There’s chaos then, for a little bit. Clint stumbles again and Sam catches him, calling for a stretcher. He helps Clint down the stairs to the concrete floor. Other agents come rushing over, grabbing at him, maneuvering him to a chair. It’s too much to take in. Clint ends up clutching at his head, half doubled over in the chair. He can vaguely hear Sam yelling at them, demanding space, and then—

“ _Clint_!”

He looks up sharply.

She’s there. She’s there and she looks the same, _exactly_ the same. She’s running towards him, pushing agents out of her way. Clint staggers to his feet and reaches out for her, and they crash together in a messy embrace. His shoulder flares with pain but he doesn’t care. He wraps himself around her, buries his face in her hair, whispers her name over and over and over. Laura is sobbing into him, face pressed to his chest, and Clint holds her tightly as tears trickle down his own cheeks.

“You’re home,” she finally says, pulling back enough that she can see his face. “Clint, baby. You’re home now. You’re safe.”

“I’m safe,” he echoes, and for the first time in a long time, he actually believes it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags have been updated, and you have no idea how HAPPY I am that I can finally say that and mean something good.
> 
> I'm on [tumblr!](https://feedmecookiesnow.tumblr.com/)


	51. Chapter 50

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laura laces her fingers together in her lap. Her mouth works, like she’s trying to say something, but after a moment she just shakes her head. They sit in silence. Clint toys with his IV line and wonders about Wanda, and what she’s doing. He wants to talk to Sam. He wants to sleep. He wants to hold Laura. He wants he wants he wants he _wants_ —
> 
> _Does it really matter what you want?_

It’s only been a few weeks here.

That’s the craziest part, he thinks. It’s been almost a year for him, but barely any time has passed here at all. He can hardly reconcile the difference in his head.

A team of doctors take him into the infirmary, force him into a hospital gown, and stitch up his wounds. They try to make Laura leave, at first, but all it takes is him choking one doctor before they change their minds and let her stay. Clint wraps his fingers around hers and refuses to let go. “You’re real,” he tells her. “Right?”

“Yes,” she whispers, pressing her lips to his heated forehead. “I’m real, baby. I’m right here.”

“Okay.”

The doctors ask him questions. He answers what he can. They take samples of everything, chattering excitedly over the changes. “We’d like to put you through some physical tests,” one says. “And get you into a sequencing machine to further examine your DNA. The changes we’re seeing here are just extraordinary. I can’t believe they did this in 1965.”

“Whatever you want,” he mutters. They’re surprised, given his history of not cooperating well with their requests, but he doesn’t have it in him to argue.

Laura, bless her heart, does it for him. “Absolutely not,” she says. “ _Look_ at him.”

“We just want—“

She cuts him off hard. “I said _no_. Give him whatever he needs, and then get _out_.”

Another doctor, a woman, laughs. “You heard her,” she says, smiling at Clint. “I’m going to give you some painkillers, and then we’ll let you rest, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He offers her an arm. She slides the needle in and starts the IV.

The rest of the doctors mutter to each other, but the woman shoos them all out. “You rest,” she says, turning back to the two of them. “We’ll check on you in a couple hours.”

She turns the lights on dim and leaves the room, and they are finally alone.

“Laura,” Clint says, reaching for her. “God, _Laura_.”

“Clint,” she whispers back.

“You’re here,” he says, feeling the tears start again. “You’re real?”

“I’m real.” Her hands wrap around his, solid and reassuring. “I promise I am real and I’m right here and I’m not leaving you.”

“I thought about you,” he says. “The whole time. Even when I tried not to.”

“I thought about you too.” She lets out a tearful laugh. “Every single second you were gone. As soon as they said you were officially missing, I went to SHIELD and raised some hell until they agreed to send a team for you.”

His heart twists. “They died. Lukas—he shot them. When I wouldn’t—” Clint takes a shuddering breath. “They were asking me about an operation and I couldn’t tell them, Laura, _I couldn’t_.”

“Shh.” Laura wraps her arms around him. “Baby. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“It’s not okay,” he chokes. “They died because of _me_.”

“Stop it.” Her hand rubs over his back. “Stop it, Clint. You’re not doing this to yourself. Not right now. I just got you back; I am _not_ losing you to your own head.”

“It was my fault,” he tells her. “All of it.”

“ _Clint_.” She puts her hands around his head, forcing him to meet her gaze. “ _Stop_ it.”

He takes another shuddering breath and closes his eyes, leaning his forehead against hers. He doesn’t know _how_ to stop it. That’s always been his problem. Mikhail had made it easier, in a way. Made it into a black and white choice. Do what he’s told, or face the consequences. No moral grey ground for him to get lost in.

“The kids miss you,” she says, and he opens his eyes again. “Nathaniel lost another tooth. He can’t wait to show you.”

“They’re okay? Did you—did you tell them?"

She lets go of his head and takes his hands again. “No. I said you got called out on a mission and weren't able to say goodbye. They miss you, but they're fine. Lila’s been practicing with her bow. Every time she hits the center, she takes a picture to show you.”

He laughs. “Good girl. How’s Cooper?”

“Practicing his baseball. He hit a home run at the game last week.”

“Wish I could’ve seen that,” Clint mutters, and he winces at the thought of having missed so much in a year—

_It wasn’t a year here. It was only a few weeks._

“Fucking time travel,” he mutters, and Laura gives a tearful laugh.

“Fucking time travel,” she agrees, and she pulls him into a hug. “I’m so glad you’re back.” She kisses his cheek. “I had a hard time sleeping when you were gone.”

She doesn’t mean anything by it. It’s an old thing between them, a phrase tossed back and forth while he was away on longer missions. She says _I’m having a hard time sleeping while you’re gone_ , and he says _you’re not gonna be doing much sleeping when I get back, either_. From there, the conversation usually turns to…well, other things, hopefully involving suggestive pictures and maybe a phone call.

But when he tries to make himself say it back, the words turn to ashes in his mouth, and suddenly all he can feel is the touch of Elizaveta on him. He tries to pull away, feeling the burn of tears in his eyes.

She doesn’t let him. “Clint,” she says again, and her voice is so soft, and warm, and so full of love that he can’t stand it a second longer.

He rips his hands free from hers and curls into himself on the bed, wrapping his arms around his knees. He doesn’t deserve her. Doesn’t deserve her touch. He has done awful things, and _betrayed_ her, and she can do so much better than him.

Clint blinks his vision clear and shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he says, and he means it for so much more.

Laura reaches out again, and he flinches away. She pulls her hand back like he burned her. “Clint,” she says, hurt in her eyes, and he wants to scream. He’s making it worse. He’s always making things worse. He doesn’t know how to handle this.

He needs Mikhail. Mikhail makes things easier. There is too much here to navigate alone.

Laura laces her fingers together in her lap. Her mouth works, like she’s trying to say something, but after a moment she just shakes her head. They sit in silence. Clint toys with his IV line and wonders about Wanda, and what she’s doing. He wants to talk to Sam. He wants to sleep. He wants to hold Laura. He wants he wants he wants he _wants_ —

_Does it really matter what you want?_

“It’s not fair,” Laura says quietly, jarring him from his thoughts. Clint realizes that he’s rocking back and forth, quietly muttering to himself. _You’ve lost it, kid,_ he thinks, and fights back a grin. _You’re finally home, and you’ve left your sanity in 1965._

“What’s not fair?” Clint asks, getting himself under control.

“What happened to you,” she says.

He lets out a bitter laugh. “That’s life, Laura. Shit happens.”

“You’ve already _been_ through shit,” she says fiercely.

“Everyone’s been through shit,” he says, thinking about Bucky. “Most of it worse than me.”

She shakes her head. “Don’t do that to yourself, Clint.”

“What?”

“Discount your experiences. It’s not right.”

He feels the phantom sting of a leather strap, and Mikhail’s voice echoing in his ears. _Do not discount your experiences, Clint. What you endured was painful. You have every right to be hurt._

“Don’t,” he says. “I—don’t say that. Please.”

“It’s true,” she says, and he presses his hands over his ears, trying to block out the ghosts.

“Can you go?” he asks. “I…I need to sleep. Can you go?”

She looks hurt again, and he hates himself. He nearly killed a man for trying to make her leave earlier, and now he’s kicking her out. God, he’s an asshole. Weber should’ve just put a bullet in his head.

“Okay,” she says, getting up. “I’ll check on you later.”

“The kids,” Clint says, looking up. “Do they…do they know I’m back?”

Laura shakes her head. “They’re with my mother this week. I couldn’t look them in the eye and lie anymore.”

He closes his eyes. “Don’t tell them I’m back.”

“I won’t,” she says.

“I don’t want them to see this.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

Her hand gently touches his face, and he flinches again. She doesn’t pull away this time. “I know that too,” she murmurs. “Go to sleep, baby. It’s okay.”

She leaves. Clint stares up at the ceiling until his eyes burn, and tries to find that numbness in his mind, that place where things don’t hurt so damn much.

He doesn’t, but eventually sleeps takes him anyway.

****

“Agent Barton,” someone says.

Clint comes awake in an instant. He moves without thinking, rolling out of bed and onto his knees, head down, arms at his side. “Yes, sir?” he says automatically. He doesn’t know what’s happened, but he knows he’s in trouble. He braces himself for a hit, fixing his eyes on the ground.

Except there is white tile under his knees, not grey concrete, and sunlight instead of florescent light, and he’s wearing the wrong clothes and those are not Mikhail’s shoes.

Clint looks up into the bewildered face of a doctor—the woman from yesterday, the nice one—and blinks in confusion. “I…”

“Agent,” she says, and he shudders hard at the word. Then memory floods back to him. The party. The escape. Laura.

“I’m back,” he says, staring at her dumbly. “I…I’m back.”

She tilts her head, slight confusion on her face, and he realizes he’s speaking Russian again. He swallows and repeats himself.

“You are,” she agrees, keeping her distance. “Do you know where you are?”

“SHIELD,” he says, looking at the logo on her white jacket. “Medical?”

“That’s right. Can you tell me your name?”

“Clint.” He scrubs his hand over his face. “Sorry. I…I forgot where I was.”

“It’s understandable,” she says. “You’ve been away for a long time.” She offers him a hand, and after a moment, he takes it. She helps him up to his feet. “How are you feeling?”

“Better,” he says. He pokes at the IV line. “Can we take this out?”

“Let me examine you first,” she says. “Sit on the bed, please.”

Clint sits. She gently pulls up the bandages on his wounds. “These are healing well.”

“Yeah,” he says. “They gave me a serum. Like Steve’s. Not as good, I think, but it…” he trails off and waves a hand. “He called it enhancement.”

“He?”

“Mikhail. My…handler.” Handler is an inadequate word for what Mikhail was to him, but he doesn’t know how else to explain it. Center of the known universe, maybe? “Anyway. I heal faster. My eyesight’s better. I can run more, and I’m stronger, and—“ He stops, shakes his head. “Yeah.”

“Sounds fascinating,” she says calmly. “I’d love to study the effects some day, if you’ll permit me.”

Clint shrugs, wincing as it pulls at his shoulder. The doctor snaps her gloves off and tosses them in the trash. “A few more days,” she says. “Based on what I’m seeing here.”

“I have to stay here?”

“That would be for the best,” she says. “We need to monitor you. And Pysch wants to talk with you, anyway.”

Clint shakes his head. “No.”

“Agent Barton—“

_“Don’t!”_

The doctor flinches back, and he takes a deep breath to calm himself. “Please don’t call me that,” he says, holding a hand out like he can push the words away. “I—I’m not him anymore.” 

She nods. “Okay. What would you prefer?”

“Clint,” he says. “Just…just Clint.”

“I’ll add a note to your file.” She offers him a hand again, and he shakes it. “I’m Dr. Collins.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“Your wife is in the hallway,” she tells him. “Do you want me to send her in?”

Clint thinks for a moment, then shakes his head. “No.” Rather, he does, desperately. He wants to hold her and tell he’s sorry and go home to his kids and forget all of this ever happened. But he _can’t_ do that. Not when his own fucking name puts him on his knees, and he flinches at every touch, and he can’t look his wife in the eyes. He might be _safe_ now, but he still feels like part of him is locked in that base, trembling at Mikhail’s feet.

Clint wonders what his reaction was to hearing about the party, and that Clint is gone. It’s absurd to think about—it was sixty years ago, but it feels like yesterday. _Was_ yesterday. _Fucking time travel._

He’s gripping his head again, he realizes, and slowly looses his hands. “Sorry,” he says, not looking up at Collins. “I’m…”

“I understand,” she says. “Trust me.”

“I feel like I’m going crazy.” He rubs at his forehead. “I just…I can’t believe this is real.”

“You’ve been away a long time,” she says. “And in a completely different time as well. I don’t expect you to bounce back to this right away. ”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I do think you should talk with someone,” she says. “You’ve been through a lot.”

Clint rolls his eyes. “Psych’s not helpful,” he says. “Bunch of assholes in white coats who’ve never been in the field a day in their life.” He looks at her. “No offense, ma’am.”

“None taken.” She smiles. “Besides, I was in Army before I became a doctor. I spent my own time with assholes in lab coats who thought they knew everything.”

“Fun, isn’t it?”

“Terrific fun.” She taps the IV. “You want an old veteran’s advice?”

Normally he dismisses anything by SHIELD doctors. But she’s one of the more reasonable ones he’s met, so he shrugs and says, “I guess.”

Collins kneels, so they’re on the same level, and gently puts a hand on his knee. Clint makes himself look her in the eyes. “You went through a serious trauma,” she says. “Whatever you had to do to survive that is not your fault. And you shouldn’t blame yourself for anything that you had to do, no matter how unforgivable you think it is.”

He lets a bitter smile curve his mouth. “That so?”

“Yes,” she says simply. “It is.”

Clint takes his hands away from his head. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

“You probably can’t, at first,” she says. “It takes time. And practice. Recalibrating your thinking is one of the hardest things we can do.” She smiles sadly at him. “But it’s possible, Clint. I promise you.”

He takes a shaky breath. “How?”

“Give yourself some grace,” she says simply. “And remember that you made it out alive. Find someone to talk to. It doesn’t have to be Psych, or your wife, or even your friends. Just someone. I spent a year spilling my secrets to a therapy dog.”

“I’ve done that,” Clint says. “Dogs are good listeners.”

“They are,” she agrees. “Better than humans, sometimes. Especially when things get heavy.” She sighs. “I was leading a tac team through a hot spot in Afghanistan. I had twelve people with me. We got caught in a surprise ambush. I was the only one who made it out alive.”

There’s a haunted look to her eyes that he knows all too well. “I’m sorry,” he says.

“I spent _years_ blaming myself,” she says. “I should have known better, moved faster, been smarter. I should have protected them. It should have been me, bleeding out in that field. I couldn’t stand that fact that I was alive, and the best people I’ve ever known were dead. One bad night I drove out to the waterfront. I sat there all night with a gun in my hands, staring at the waves, and I almost put a bullet in my head.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because the sun came up,” she says. “And there was somebody jogging on the beach. He passed within ten feet of me, and he waved, and I realized that he would have been the one to find my body.” She lets out a deep breath. “I remembered what it was like to find my team out in the field. How I crawled from body to body, _desperate_ to see if anyone was alive. That sort of thing leaves a mark on your soul. I didn’t think it was right to subject someone else to that. So I went home. I called my best friend, and gave her the gun. I found a therapist—a person therapist—and I started talking. Applied for med school. Met my wife. We have a little girl together now.”

Her voice cracks, and she wipes her eyes. “I still think about that firefight,” she says. “I still wake up screaming about it. But I’ve learned to give myself grace for it. The decisions I made were to the best of my ability at the time. I can’t change it. I can’t bring them back. The best thing I can do is put good into the world in their names, and try to honor their sacrifices.”

She pats his knee. “You don’t have to forgive yourself right away, Clint. All I ask is when you start blaming yourself, you just remember _why_ you did the things you did. It’s easy to judge these things from a safe distance. But you were in the middle of the firefight, and you needed to survive. Don’t forget that.”

Collins stands up. Clint stares at the ground, trying to process. “Thank you,” he says after a moment, barely audible.

“You’re welcome,” she says. “I’m here if you need me.” She puts her hand on the door.

“Send Laura in,” Clint says.

Collins pauses. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” He takes a deep breath. “I need to tell her something.”

She studies him for a moment. “Okay,” she says, and opens the door.

Clint keeps staring at the floor. There’s a quiet murmur of words outside, and then the bed creaks slightly as Laura sits next to him. “Hey,” she says, putting her hand over his. “What’s a cute guy like you doing in a place like this?”

He snorts in spite of himself, and feels her relax next to him. “This is where all the pretty girls are,” he says, tangling their fingers together. “Everyone knows that.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

They sit like that for a long time, watching the sunlight dance across the tile floor. Clint focuses on the pressure of her fingers in his, the soft warmth against his side. He doesn’t really have the words for this, but he has to tell her. He has to know if he’s doing the rest of this journey alone or not. And he has to do it _now_ , while Collins’s advice is fresh in his mind and he’s remembering _why_ he did it.

Laura doesn’t say anything. She just leans her head against his shoulder and waits.

_I don’t deserve you,_ Clint thinks, pressing his lips to her forehead. _I never have._

“I was gone for a year,” he says quietly.

She nods once.

“It was…less than fun.”

She nods again.

“I slept with someone else.”

The words tumble out in a rush, like he’s trying to get it out and take them back all at the same time. Laura stiffens a little bit, and he winces, feeling the guilt threatening to consume him.

“I didn’t think I was coming home,” he says. Then he shakes his head. “Fuck. That came out wrong.”

He gets up and starts pacing as much the IV will allow. Laura watches him, but he can’t look at her. He has to get the words out first.

“I was alone,” he says. “For months. They tortured me. I—“ He scowls and reaches behind himself, untying the gown.

She gasps a little as he turns his back, showing the scars from his various tortures. They’re not as bad as they used to be, but they’re definitely visible. He doubts they’ll ever go away, serum or no. They’re a part of him now, like his tattoo. A tangible history of his worst nightmares.

He moves away and ties it shut again. “Her name is Elizaveta,” he says. “Was, I guess. She was my trainer. Taught me how to fight.” He laughs a little. “I’m pretty good now. Could probably take out Nat.”

Laura doesn’t say anything.

“She tried, a few times. In the beginning. I kept telling her no. I told her no so many times. And then Mikhail—“ He stops, takes a few breaths to calm himself. “They did something worse. And I was broken, Laura, I was so broken. And she tried again, and I just didn’t—I couldn’t—I wasn’t _strong_ enough.”

Laura doesn’t say anything.

“It wasn’t just once,” Clint says, because he has to keep going. He can’t stop now. “It happened again, and again, and I hated myself for it but I kept doing it because it was the only time I could _feel_ something.”

Laura doesn’t say anything.

“It wasn’t love,” he says. “I don’t think of her that way. I never could. I just needed someone. To remember what it was like to be a person. To be alive.”

He stops, then. His hand is wrapped around the IV pole, clutching it for dear life, and he can’t make himself look at her. He just stares at his bare feet and waits for his judgement.

An eternity passes. Then there’s a creak of the bed, and a gentle hand presses against his face. “Clint,” Laura says. “Look at me.”

He swallows and raises his eyes to hers.

“I’m not going to pretend,” she says softly, “that it doesn’t hurt.” He starts to pull away, and she moves closer. “But I understand why you did it. And I don’t fault you for it.”

“I betrayed you,” he says, closing his eyes.

“You came back to me,” she corrects. “Clint, look at me. Please.”

He does, and there’s so much love in her face that he almost can’t bear it.

“You came back to me,” she says again. “Do you understand what that means? I thought you _died_ , Clint. I thought you were lost in time forever.” She wraps her arms around him, pressing her face into his chest. “And now you’re here. You’re in my arms and you’re _alive_ , and I don’t care what you had to do to make that happen. You’re _here_. That’s all that matters to me. We can work out the rest later.”

Laura pulls back and puts her hands around his face. “I _love_ you,” she says, nothing but quiet sincerity in her voice. “And I always, _always_ will. Nothing you did or ever do will change that.”

The tears spill over, and Clint bends down to kiss her. She tastes like sunlight, he thinks, and lazy nights in their farmhouse, and the feeling of waking up safe next to someone you love. She tastes like _home_.

“I love you too,” he says, holding her tightly. "I love you too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on [tumblr!](https://feedmecookiesnow.tumblr.com/)


	52. Chapter 51

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint absorbs all this information. He should be relieved, he thinks, that nothing truly terrible ever came of what happened. If the Mind Stone is really gone, and HYDRA never attempted to build another machine, then the future—his children’s future—is safe. Or as safe as it can be.
> 
> And he _is_ relieved. But the guilt is still there, threatening to crush him. He thinks about the first team that came to save him, and the people in Omaha who died, and the ones who died raiding the base to erase his mistake, and all others that he hurt. _My fault my fault my fault._

Clint and Laura are sitting on his bed playing cards when the door opens. “Wanda,” Clint says, scrambling to his feet. He pulls her into a fierce hug, feeling the worry of the last day melt away. “You’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” she says, hugging him back. “It’s good to see you here.”

Laura gets up, and Wanda pulls away from Clint to embrace her as well. “Thank you,” Laura whispers at her.

They all sit down, then. There’s a moment of awkward silence, where they’re all kind of looking at each other, and then Clint says, “Wanda, I’m _sorry_.”

He feels like there should be more to it—paragraphs and paragraphs of apologies—but Wanda seems to relax a little bit at his words. “I know,” she says, and she takes her hand in his. “I am too.”

There’s another knock on the door, and Sam pokes his head in. “Ah, so this is where the party is.”

“Come on in,” Clint says. “We’re playing Texas Hold ‘Em.”

“Who’s winning?”

“Me,” Laura says.

“She always wins,” Clint says, setting his cards to the side. “Every time. I think it’s a conspiracy.”

Laura laughs. “Keep telling yourself that, love.” She turns to Sam. “Is everything…is it all settled? Everything back to normal?”

Sam shrugs and pulls up a chair. “As far as we know,” he says, “the timestream is relatively intact.”

“What happened?” Clint demands. “You said at the party that—“

Wanda holds up a hand. “We’ll start from the beginning,” she says. “From when you went missing. Does that work?”

He nods, and between the three of them, he gets the full story.

After he’d fallen into the time machine, SHIELD waited for him to return. When he didn’t, they assumed he was in trouble, and spent time searching the archives for any mention of him. Nothing showed up until he made his own extraction call, which finally gave them the correct date and year. They sent a team after him, and the team had sent back possible locations before going dark.

“They died,” Clint says, interrupting her. “They found me, but Lukas shot them to make me give up Omaha.” He stares at the floor, seeing their bodies fall again.

“We know,” Wanda says. She puts her hand over his. “It’s okay.”

After the team had been declared missing, Wanda had demanded to go and do recon. She’d gone back to where the team had last been heard from, and started retracing steps. She tore apart the Russian base where he’d originally been, and another one before she managed to work out the location of the one in Germany. A defecting HYDRA agent offered to help her track it down and rescue Clint.

“Wait,” Clint says. “You were with him that night. The guy the Soldier threw.”

“Anatoly,” she says.

“Did he make it?”

Wanda smiles. “He’s okay. SHIELD set him up in Boston with a new identity, as a thanks for helping me. He’s still alive today, actually. I’m planning on visiting him tomorrow.”

Clint nods. He’s glad. The guy had looked a little bit in over his head, but he’d protected Wanda, and that earned Clint’s respect. “What happened after I sent you back?”

“You pissed her off,” Sam says. “A lot.”

“You did,” Wanda agrees, and she holds up a hand to stop his apology. “I know. Let us finish the story.”

Sam takes over at this point. “We went back to Camp Lehigh,” he says. “SHIELD’s been using it as a touchstone for missions. We met up with Peggy Carter.”

“Isn’t that—“

“Yes.” He smiles. “Just as formidable as Steve said, by the way. You would’ve liked her.”

Clint frowns. “Wait, did you see Steve? Was he there? I thought he went back and stayed with her.”

“We didn’t see him,” Sam says. “We stayed at Lehigh. I don’t know where he was. Or if he even really was there. Carter didn’t say anything.”

“Fucking time travel,” Clint says, and there’s a moment of silent agreement from all of them.

“Anyway,” Sam says. “She asked us to work out a plan for HYDRA’s time machine. We knew they had the knowledge of it—“ Clint feels a flush of shame at that “—and we knew they were building one. There was an informant passing us information.”

“You said that before,” Clint says. “Do you know who it was?”

“Carter only said it was a highly placed woman.”

Something snaps into place in his mind, interactions suddenly making sense when framed in a different light, and Clint lets out a little laugh. “Eliza,” he says.

“She never mentioned the name. We’re not sure.”

“No, it was her. It’s the only thing that makes sense.” He rubs his forehead. “She was SHIELD the whole time?”

“No. SHIELD apparently helped save her sister. She was HYDRA, but she passed along pertinent information as part of an agreement for keeping her sister safe.”

Clint nods. “Did they know I was there? SHIELD, I mean.”

“Not until we started looking for you.”

“And they didn’t do anything?” He can’t keep the bitterness from his words.

“You have to understand,” Sam says, his voice calm. “Carter doesn’t know you. Not like we do. You weren’t her agent, you’re ours. It’s not that she didn’t think you were worth a rescue. But she had other priorities. And they _did_ help us, when we asked.”

Clint shoves aside his feelings on the matter. “Fine.”

“Anyway,” Wanda says. “We worked out a plan with Carter. We knew from the informant that HYDRA was building their own machine, and that they would need Pym Particles to make it work.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, thinking about his visit to Lukas’s office. “They asked me about those. I—I told them I didn’t know.” He clenches his fists, only relaxing once Laura’s hand wraps around him. “I said they’d have to find Hank.”

Another thing suddenly slots into place, and he curses himself for not seeing it before. Hank looked different in 1965, sure, but Clint should have recognized him. “Fuck. That’s who we were getting at the party, wasn’t it? That’s what the team was for?”

“Yes,” Wanda says.

Clint closes his eyes. He’d almost fucked up, _again_. He’d almost stood by and let them take the last piece of the puzzle without a fight. _What is even the point of you?_

“Clint,” Sam says. “Don’t do that.”

He grits his teeth. “Do what?”

“Blame yourself. We were there, Clint. We weren’t going to let anyone take Hank. Or you.”

“But what if you hadn’t—”

Laura’s hand cups along his face, and he opens his eyes. “Don’t,” she says softly. “Don’t torture yourself like that. That’s not what happened.”

_But it could have._ It’s terrifying, really, how close he’d come to ruining the entire future because he’d been too numb and too afraid to question Mikhail. He almost handed them Hank Pym on a platter. Would have, if Wanda and Sam hadn’t come.

Collins’s voice echoes in his ear. _You were in the middle of the firefight. You did what it took to survive._

Wanda continues. “While we waited for you to show up again, we spent the interim time chasing down leads on their research. We learned that HYDRA had kept all of it in one place—that black base in Germany. Everything was housed there. They were too paranoid to take it anywhere else, and the base was supposed to be completely hidden.”

“It was,” Clint says.

“Not anymore,” Sam says. “We made a plan with Carter. A two-pronged assault. We floated this idea of a secret party, a little gathering where Hank would be _slightly_ more vulnerable. A good time for a snatch team to grab him. And at the same time, we sent in a team to Germany.”

Clint nods slowly. “So you planned the party,” he says, “as a way to draw me out?”

“Some of it was hope and luck,” Sam says. “But it made the most sense, since you were already privy to time travel information. And then the informant confirmed you were coming. The same night as the party, that team raided the base and they blew everything up. The whole place is just a smoking crater.”

“Wait. The base is _gone_?”

“Yeah,” Wanda says. “That’s why I stayed. I wanted to make sure it was all taken care of.”

Clint pictures the base—his room, the places he was tortured, Lukas’s fucking office and his precious records—and can’t hold back a stab of satisfaction. “It’s all gone,” he says.

“Everything. Every bit of research, every scrap of information, every bolt, every nut, every piece of it. It’s gone.” Her eyes go distant. “SHIELD lost four agents in the process, but it’s all gone.”

Four agents. Four more lives on him. Clint winces.

“What about…” he starts, then trails off.

Laura squeezes his hand. “What about what?”

He swallows. “The people,” he says. “Elizaveta. Lukas.” He pauses. “Mikhail.”

“To the best of our knowledge,” she says, gaze intent on him, “Lukas died in the base. Two of the agents confirmed it. I’m not sure about the others.”

There’s another stab of satisfaction at hearing about Lukas’s death, although part of him wishes it had been slower. More painful. Elizaveta, he has mixed feelings about. She’d been cruel at times, but she’d also been kind to him. Part of him hopes that she did make it out alive. Maybe defected to SHIELD permanently.

Clint doesn’t even want to _think_ about Mikhail right now. There’s way too many feelings to explore there, and he’s pretty sure he’s going to have a total breakdown if he starts down that path in front of them.

“What about the Mind Stone?” he asks.

“Well,” Wanda says, leaning back in her chair. “This is where things get a little weird.”

Clint laughs. “We’re talking about things that happened almost sixty years ago and also yesterday, and _this_ is where things get weird?”

Wanda laughs too. “The Mind Stone was in Omaha, originally. In the base.”

He feels another flush of shame. “I know. I told them the base was there.”

“Stop that,” Wanda says. “They _tortured_ you, Clint. We can all see it.” She holds up a hand to stop his protest. “Let me finish before you start beating yourself up again. You’re right, HYDRA found the stone. They were using it in some kind of mind control machine. I had Howard Stark take a look at some pictures.”

“The Cube,” Clint says. “I thought it was the Tesseract at first, but it was the Mind Stone. They used it on me. Made me—made me see my memories.” He shudders.

“Yeah,” Wanda says softly. “We figured it was something like that.” She shakes her head. “In any case, the team that raided the base stole the Stone, and they were going to bring it back to Camp Lehigh.”

“Let me guess,” Clint says tiredly. “They never made it back?”

“The survivors did. The Stone didn’t. According to their accounts, a spaceship came from the sky, and a guy with a flat nose and a huge forehead took the Stone from them.”

“Wait a second,” Sam says. “Bruce told me about that guy. Wasn’t he with Thanos?”

“One of his right-hand men,” Wanda agrees. “Carter has people out looking, but I don’t think they’re going to find anything. The Stone is with Thanos.” She frowns. “ _Was_ with Thanos.”

More puzzle pieces click into place. His head’s gonna blow from information overload. “Thanos gave it to Loki,” he says. “For his scepter. That’s how he controlled me before New York.” He winces at the memory. “I’m surprised the team survived.”

“I am too,” Wanda says. “From all accounts, they should have died. But they didn’t. So that’s where the Stone is now. _Was_ now.” She scowls.

“So the Stone is gone,” Sam says. “Set back on its proper course of time or whatever. And the future is the same? Is that it? Everything nudged back on track?”

Clint rubs his forehead. “This is confusing,” he complains. “So if nothing is changed in the future, does that mean what happened was always going to happen? HYDRA was always going to hit Omaha and take the Stone?” Which raises other, horrifying trains of thought. Was he always supposed to end up in 1965? Was it part of his fucking _destiny_ or something? “Would we even _know_ if something was different?”

_You don’t believe in destiny,_ he thinks, but he’s not really sure what he believes anymore.

“We don’t know,” Sam says. “It’s possible that was the case. Or maybe Thanos would have just taken it from SHIELD. We’re not sure. There’s branching possibilities, and I’m not even going to pretend to understand the complexities of time travel. But the Mind Stone is gone, the base and all the research is destroyed. HYDRA doesn’t have a time machine, not in 1965, and we haven’t been able to uncover any evidence of them ever building one again. We have teams double-checking on that right now. We _think_ —emphasis on think—that everything is back to normal. As normal as it gets around here.”

Clint absorbs all this information. He should be relieved, he thinks, that nothing truly terrible ever came of what happened. If the Mind Stone is really gone, and HYDRA never attempted to build another machine, then the future—his children’s future—is safe. Or as safe as it can be.

And he _is_ relieved. But the guilt is still there, threatening to crush him. He thinks about the first team that came to save him, and the people in Omaha who died, and the ones who died raiding the base to erase his mistake, and all others that he hurt. _My fault my fault my fault._

They’re all looking at him, full of concern, and he tries to pull himself together. _Remember why you did it._ “So it’s over?” he asks, his voice quiet.

“Yeah,” Wanda says. “It’s over.”

Clint lets out a shaky breath. “Jesus,” he says. “My…my head hurts.”

“I know this was a lot,” Sam says. “We’ll let you sit on it for a bit. You can come find us if you have any other questions.” He stands up and puts a hand on Clint’s shoulder. “I know you’re gonna hear this over and over,” he says, “but what happened was not your fault. None of it was. It was a freak accident that ballooned into shitty circumstances, and you did the best job you could with what you had.”

“Sure,” Clint says, staring at his hands, wrapped up in Laura’s soft grip.

“I mean it,” Sam says. “I’m here if you want to talk. We all are.”

“Yeah,” Clint says. “Okay.” He looks up at Sam. Tries for a smile. “Thank you. Both of you. I owe you…a lot. So much.”

“We would never have left you,” Wanda says. “Never. Sam said we’d bring you back even if we had to do it kicking and screaming. You’re our family, Clint.”

He gives a little nod and says, “I know,” around the lump in his throat.

They leave. Laura stays, pushing the abandoned card game to the side so she can pull Clint into her arms. He leans against her, too weary to sit up on his own. _It’s over. The base is a crater, the research is destroyed, and the Mind Stone is in Thanos’s hands. It’s over._ But the guilt is still there, screaming at the back of his mind, and so is Mikhail.

He knows he should be hoping that Mikhail died alongside Lukas. He knows that a large part of what he’s feeling is because of Mikhail, and his emotional manipulation. He can see that. He’s always seen that, even as it happened. But he still can’t stop himself from wishing to see Mikhail, or wanting to hear his voice again.

_It’s logical,_ he tells himself. _He was your whole world for almost a year. He made you dependent on him. How could you not want him to survive?_

But Loki had fucked with Clint’s head too, and he’d come out of that one with a seething hatred. Not this learned helplessness. What made this so different?

Laura kisses his hand. “Clint,” she says, her voice drawing him out of his head. “Baby.”

He looks at her. “What?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too,” he whispers, drawing her into a kiss. “So fucking much.”

They break apart, then, and he just holds her. Revels in the feeling of having her back in his arms after missing her for a year. She’s always known how to handle his demons better than he can, and he’s so fucking relieved he doesn’t have to do this alone.

“So what now?” Clint finally asks, gently playing with a strand of her hair.

“You come home,” Laura says. “And we figure out the rest from there.”

He presses his face into her hair and breathes in the scent of her. “Okay,” he murmurs. “I think I can make that work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Also started writing a Clintasha fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24147523/chapters/58144891) if anyone is interested. It's complete, 11 chapters total. I'll put up a new one every few days. 
> 
> I'm on [tumblr!](https://feedmecookiesnow.tumblr.com/)


	53. Chapter 52

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’re all talking to him at once, arms excitedly waving. Nate shows him the hole from his missing tooth. Lila shoves her phone in his face with pictures of bullseyes. Cooper is shuffling back and forth on his feet, grinning as he recounts the last baseball game he pitched.
> 
> Clint pulls each one of them into a hug, feeling more and more like himself with every word and touch and gesture. He doesn’t know exactly how he’s going to navigate life after Mikhail, but he’s pretty damn sure that this is the best possible first step. He’s got his kids again. It can only go uphill from here, right?

SHIELD Medical begrudgingly lets him go once his wounds are mostly healed. One of the doctors wants to keep him to run tests, but Dr. Collins shuts him down hard. “He’s been away from home for a _year_ ,” she says. “Let the man go see his children.”

“But the data,” the doctor protests.

“All due respect,” Laura says sweetly, gripping Clint’s hand like a vise, “but fuck your data.” Clint bites back a laugh. “I’m taking my husband home, and if you want to argue with it, you’re going to go through me.”

“And me,” Wanda adds.

“And me,” Sam agrees.

Clint shrugs at the guy. “Up to you,” he says. “But personally, I wouldn’t tangle with any of them.” He points at Laura. “She’s the scariest.”

The doctor scowls, but signs the forms to free him. Collins offers Clint her hand. “I _would_ like to run those tests someday,” she says, “but only when you’re ready.”

“I’ll call you,” Clint says, shaking her hand. “Thank you.”

“Remember what I said.”

“I will.” He pulls her into a hug. “It’s helped already.”

They all walk out of SHIELD together. Clint pauses in the bright sunlight and soaks it in, head tilted up and eyes closed. He’s never taking this for granted again. None of it. Not now that he knows how easily fresh air and sunlight can be taken away.

Laura bumps him. “You okay?”

“Just getting the sun. They kept me underground a lot.” Laura looks slightly horrified by this, and Clint winces. “The base was underground,” he clarifies. “I wasn’t like, buried alive or anything.” _Although it_ felt _like it sometimes._

“Well,” she says, nudging him with her shoulder. “Maybe if you finish the sunroom, we can have a nap there together.”

“I would like that,” Clint says, kissing her forehead. “I would like that very much.”

“Here we are,” Sam says, gesturing at the Quinjet parked on the front lawn. “Courtesy of SHIELD. You wanna fly?”

“Hell no,” Clint says. “I want to sit in the back with my wife. You can fly.”

Sam agrees. Wanda climbs up front with him, and Laura and Clint sit in the back. He keeps his arm around her, still half-convinced that this is all a dream. Like he’s gonna wake up back in that stupid base with Mikhail standing over him, and this will all have been nothing more than a fantasy in his broken mind.

“Hey,” Laura says, poking him. “Stop that.”

He blinks. “Stop what?”

“Getting lost in your head. This is real. I’m real. You’re going home, to your kids, and we’re going to have family dinner and maybe play a game, and then you and I are going to bed.”

“Laura, I—“ He stops. “I don’t know if I _can_ —“

“Shush,” she says. “Just bed, Clint. I just want to sleep next to you. We can do or not do anything you want, but I need you in there with me.” She leans her head against him. “I missed you. And your snoring.”

“What? I don’t snore.”

“You definitely snore.”

“I do _not_.”

“You so do.” She’s smiling at him, and he laughs, impressed as always by the way she can pull him out of his thoughts like that. “But I love you anyway. And I missed it.”

He nods. “Are the kids back, then?”

“Yeah. I didn’t tell them you were coming. I thought it would be fun to surprise them.” She looks at him. “I don’t think they’ve left my mom’s yet. If you want, I can tell her to wait. If you need time to adjust at home first. I shouldn’t have assumed—”

“No,” Clint says. “No, I want to see them. It’s been a year.” He frowns. “Or weeks, I guess. Fucking time travel.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I just…I need to see that they still look the same? I know that’s weird.”

“It’s not weird,” she assures him. “Time travel. I get it.” She pats his arm. “They’ll get there after us, so you’ll have some time to get ready.”

“That’ll probably be good,” Clint admits.

They’re quiet for a while, listening to the hum of conversation between Wanda and Sam. Clint leans his head against Laura and thinks about nothing in particular, just enjoying being next to her. Feeling like he can breathe for the first time in a year.

“I want you to know,” Laura murmurs, “that you don’t have to tell me anything that happened.”

He shifts a little. “What?”

“You don’t have to tell me,” she says again, her thumb rubbing over the scars on his wrist. “I would love it if you did, obviously, because I love _you_ and I want to support you. But I just want you to know that you’re not obligated to. And that I’m not going to push it.” She kisses his knuckles. “But I think at some point, you should talk to someone.”

“Dr. Collins tell you that?”

“We had a talk, yes. But I also know you, and how you internalize trauma, and I don’t think that’s going to be the best way to deal with it. Not this time.”

She’s right, of course. She’s always right. “I know. And I will, I promise. Just…not right now? Please.” Clint squeezes her hand. “I just want to go home, Laura. I want to see the kids and eat something and sleep in my own bed. I swear I’ll find someone. But I need to do that first. It’ll help me. Convince me this is real.”

“Okay,” she says simply. “I just wanted to get that out there.”

“I know.” He holds her tighter. “You’re good to me.” _And I missed you so, so much._

The Quinjet lands in the field outside the farmhouse, the same place he’d put it down so many years ago when bringing the rest of the team here. Laura tugs him to his feet. “Come on, love. Home.”

“Home,” he echoes.

Sam and Wanda walk down the ramp with them. “This is as far as we go,” Sam says, giving him a smile. “We’ll let you get reacquainted before we start bothering you again.”

Clint pulls his hand from Laura’s. “Guys, I don’t…I don’t know what to say.”

“You’ve said it,” Wanda tells him. She gives him a hug. “Go home, Clint. Go see your kids.”

Sam shakes his hand. “Go on,” he says. “Give me a call if you feel like getting a beer or something once you’re settled.”

“Will do,” he says.

They watch the Quinjet fly away. As soon as it vanishes into the sky, Laura tilts her head towards the house. “Well?”

“Coming.”

It looks the same as always, his little farmhouse. Peeling paint on the outside, front porch that still needs fixing. Red barn in the background. Goats running around in their pen. Kids toys in the front yard. Beat-up truck in the driveway. Everything that he hasn’t let himself think about in a year.

Clint’s vision blurs, and he swipes hard at his face. “Sorry,” he says.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Laura says. “Come on. Let’s get you inside.”

Inside is the same too, and he doesn’t know why he expected anything different. But it’s all there too—the books, the table, the arrows he left laying on the counter before he went into work that morning. “Ah,” he says, brushing his hand over them. “Sorry, hon. I meant to clean these up before I left.”

“Lila’s been using them,” she says. “And one of your older bows. She says hers is too light a draw.”

Clint smiles. “I can’t wait to see that,” he says. “She’s gonna be better than me someday.”

“No doubt.”

He sits at the table and puts his hands on the wood, feeling the smooth grain under his fingertips. That, more than anything, grounds him. This is real. He’s never been able to feel anything in his dreams.

“Do you want me to cook something?” Laura asks. “I can…I think we have pizza? Or I can make you a sandwich, or…”

“Coffee,” Clint says. “Please. Good coffee. I can’t tell you the last time I had good coffee.”

“I can do that.”

She brews it quickly and passes him his favorite mug, the purple one with a crooked arrow painted on it that Lila had given him for a birthday present. He take it from her and wanders outside to the porch to sit on the rocking chair. Laura pours her own mug and joins him, leaning against the railing. The view outside is gorgeous, everything he’s missed, but he can’t take his eyes off her. _God, you’re so beautiful._

“Hey,” she says, nudging his leg with her foot. “See something you like?”

“Definitely,” he says. “Prettiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, standing in front of me.” He takes a sip. “And you’re okay too, I suppose.”

“Jerk,” she says, kicking his leg, but she’s smiling.

They drink their coffee in silence, enjoying the quiet of the farm. Clint’s almost at the bottom of his cup when there’s a crunching of gravel, and a van turns into the long driveway. “Heads up,” Laura says. “You ready for this?”

“So ready.” He can’t stop the grin from spreading over his face as he gets up and starts walking down the path.

The doors open before the van even stops, and Lila comes tearing up the rest of the driveway, shoes skidding over the gravel “DAD!”

“Hey, Lila,” he says, and that’s all he gets out before she barrels into him. He catches her easily, spinning her around. “How’s my favorite girl, huh?”

“Dad!”

He shifts Lila to his side and drops to one knee, extending his other arm for Nathaniel. His youngest buries into him with an excited shout, and then Cooper is there too, thin arms wrapped around all of them, and Clint can’t keep the tears from falling. “Hey kids,” he says, kissing the top of Cooper’s head. “Hi. Good to see you guys. I _missed_ you.”

They look the same. They all look the same, and he drinks it in through his increasingly blurry vision. Lila still has the same smile, and Cooper is just as tall and gangly as he remembers, and Nate’s hair is still fluffy, and it’s all just as he left it. Like no time has passed at all.

They’re all talking to him at once, arms excitedly waving. Nate shows him the hole from his missing tooth. Lila shoves her phone in his face with pictures of bullseyes. Cooper is shuffling back and forth on his feet, grinning as he recounts the last baseball game he pitched.

Clint pulls each one of them into a hug, feeling more and more like himself with every word and touch and gesture. He doesn’t know exactly _how_ he’s going to navigate life after Mikhail, but he’s pretty damn sure that this is the best possible first step. He’s got his kids again. It can only go uphill from here, right?

“Dad,” Lila says, touching his cheek. “Why are you crying?”

“Because I missed you,” he says, freeing a hand to scrub at his eyes. “All of you. _So_ much.”

Cooper tilts his head to the side, as perceptive as his mother, but doesn’t offer any further comments. Nate tugs on his sleeve. “Was it a bad mission?”

“It was a _long_ mission,” Clint says truthfully. “And hard, sometimes.”

“But you’re back now,” Cooper says. “And you’re okay? Did you get hurt?”

“A little.” Clint scoops Nate up into his arm and wraps the other around Cooper. “But I’ll be okay, I think.”

They start walking back towards the house. Lila runs to meet Laura, who greets her with a hug and a smile. “How was Grandma’s?”

“Boring,” Cooper says.

“Very boring,” Lila agrees. “Look Mom, Dad’s back!”

“I know, honey,” Laura says, smiling at Clint. “I can see him.”

“Are you back forever?” Nate asks, twisting to lay his head on Clint’s shoulder. The simple motion just about makes him start crying all over again.

“I’m back for a long time,” Clint says, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “And maybe we have a talk about staying forever.”

Lila grins at him, and Cooper does too, and Clint grins back. It’s perfect. It’s so perfect. He’s got his family again.

“Come on,” Laura says. “Kids, go get your stuff from the van. Don’t make Grandma haul it in for you.”

They reluctantly peel themselves off Clint and go back down the driveway. “Is she staying?” Clint asks, nodding towards her mother. “I mean, it’s fine if she is.” It’s _not_ fine, but he’s willing to pretend. Now is not the time to start a fight over his mother-in-law.

“I asked her not to,” Laura says. “We need family time. The five of us.”

“ _Thank_ you,” he says, kissing her cheek. He wraps his arm around her waist and watches as the kids sprint past with their various bags and backpacks. Lila waves a bow case at him and he raises his voice so she can hear him. “Take it to the target, sweetheart. I’ll be there soon.”

Laura’s mother comes up the driveway, and Laura gives her a quick hug. “Hi, Mom.”

“Laura,” she says. “And Clint. Good to see you again. How was your trip?”

“Trip was fine,” he says, waving at her. She’s never liked him, not since she found out he worked for SHIELD, and accused him of putting Laura and the kids in danger. It was probably the most awkward dinner of his life, and since then, he tends to keep his distance from her. “Thanks for watching the kids for us. We really appreciate it.”

“You were gone a long time,” she says.

He lets out a short laugh. “I’m aware.” _Trust me. I’m very aware._

“You shouldn’t leave your family like that. The kids were worried.”

“Mom,” Laura says. “Stop it.”

“It’s okay,” Clint says to her. “I know, Sara, and I’m sorry. It was unavoidable. There was a kind of…situation that occurred.” _You know. Kidnap and torture. The usual._

“He came back as soon as he could,” Laura says sharply.

“I’m just saying—”

“You’re being nosy,” Laura tells her. “Stop it.”

Sara sighs. “Alright. Not my business. I’ll get out of your hair.” She eyes Clint with a calculating expression that reminds him of Lukas, and he suddenly feels cold. “You need to eat more. You’re too skinny.” Then she kisses Laura goodbye and walks back to the van.

“Ladies and gentlemen, my charming mother,” Laura mutters, leaning against Clint. “Sorry, honey.”

“It’s fine,” he says, shaking off the chill. “It’s normal. I don’t mind.”

“You are skinny, though.” She puts a hand on his side. “I can almost feel your ribs.”

“Super serum,” he says. “Higher metabolism. I need to eat more. They weren’t starving me. Not at the end, anyway.”

She looks a little horrified, but hides it well. “Well. I’ll get dinner started, and you can shoot with Lila.”

“Kay.” He kisses her, and goes down the steps to the target.

Lila is practically bouncing with excitement, bow already strung and ready. “Look!” she says, as soon as he gets close, and with perfect form, she pulls the string back, anchors, and releases. The arrow lands slightly off target, just a little bit to the right, and she scowls. “Aww.”

“Feet,” Clint tells her, pointing down. “It all starts with your stance.”

She adjusts her feet and tries again. This one lands perfectly, dead center, and she grins at him. “Did you see that?”

“Nice move, Hawkeye,” he says, high-fiving her. “Go get your arrow.”

They spend the rest of the day shooting. Cooper and Nathaniel come out as well, tossing around a baseball, and Clint just relishes the feeling of being with his family again.

Dinner is the usual loud affair, with all three kids trying to catch him up on what he’s missed, and afterwards, it takes a significant amount of wrangling to get them into bed. Nathaniel in particular is clingy, to the point where he’s desperately hanging on to Clint’s wrist when being tucked in. “Stay, Daddy. Please?”

“I’ll be here in the morning,” Clint says, gently peeling his fingers off. “I promise.”

“Cross your heart?” The words are quiet, and sleepy, and Clint smiles down at him.

“Cross my heart.” He kisses Nate’s head. “Go to sleep, kiddo. I’m not going anywhere. We’re gonna wake up in the morning and have pancakes and play baseball after school, okay?”

“Okay,” Nate says, already half asleep. “I love you.”

“Love you too buddy.”

He goes into their bedroom and promptly collapses face-down on the bed. “Children are exhausting,” he informs Laura.

“Of course they are,” she says from the bathroom. “That’s why we decided to have three of them.”

“Hmmph.” He rolls over. “Worth it.”

“Very worth it.” She puts her toothbrush back on the sink. “They’re just glad to see you.”

“I think Cooper knows something’s up,” he says. “Ever his mother’s son.”

“You look different,” she says. She leans against the door. “It’s not just the weight loss. You look tired.”

“I am tired.” He rubs a hand over his face and gets up. “It’s been a long day. A long year, honestly.”

Laura smiles sadly at him. “Well. You’re home now. You can sleep all you want.”

He’s not sure that’ll put a dent in it, really. It’s not just physical exhaustion. He feels completely wrung out. He’s happy to be home, and relieved that everything worked out okay, but he can still feel the weight of the past year pressing down on him. Can still feel the sting of a cane on his back, or the gut-churning stress of standing in Lukas’s office, or the brush of Mikhail’s fingers along his neck.

_It’s gone,_ he reminds himself. _It all burned down years ago, last week, and you are home._

But still. He wants to know what happened to Mikhail. Wants to know what his reaction was when he found out Clint was gone. Wants to get on his knees and _apologize_ for disobeying Mikhail’s direct orders—

_I’m sorry I’m sorry I had to do it I couldn’t kill them_

“Clint,” Laura says softly, and Clint realizes he’s trembling.

“Sorry,” he says softly, pressing his fingers into his eyebrows. “I just…I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t know how to explain it, really. He can’t find the words to tell her that he feels guilty for disobeying the man who essentially commanded him to kill his friends. So he just shakes his head and strips off his shirt, reaching for his pajamas.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” Laura says, wrapping him in a hug. He holds her, and breathes in her scent, and tries to find the feeling of peace he had earlier with the kids. “You’ve been through so much, Clint.”

He swallows and pulls away. “I know. I…I know.”

He finishes getting ready, and they get into bed. It’s odd, at first. He hasn’t slept with anyone next to him in so long. But when she settles against him, he finds he still remembers what it feels like, and he curls around her with a quiet hum of satisfaction.

“I love you,” she says.

“I love you too.”

“No snoring.”

He huffs out a laugh and pokes her stomach. “Shut up and go to sleep, Mrs. Barton.”

She captures his hand, winding their fingers together. “Everything will be okay,” she says.

“I know.”

After a few minutes, her breathing evens out, and she turns slightly, settling further into the pillows. Clint stares into the darkness of the room, listening to Laura breathe, and wonders if everything really will be okay after all. If it will all work out. If he’ll be able to find himself again, after a year of being repeatedly shattered and then remade into someone completely different. He’d like to think so. He’d like to think that somewhere, underneath the man Mikhail was trying to make, is the original Clint Barton—snarky attitude, stubbornness, and all.

Clint hopes so. God, does he hope. He has no idea what to do if the answer is no.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Might be a little slower with updates on this one. I've never done a recovery fic so it's new territory for me. I want to make sure I do it right.
> 
> Also been working on a [Tony Stark acting AU if anyone's interested,](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24239851/chapters/58407721). Many feelings are involved.
> 
> I'm on [tumblr!](https://feedmecookiesnow.tumblr.com/)


	54. Chapter 53

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because that’s probably the craziest part of this whole thing. Mikhail is the person who continually broke him. And yet, Mikhail is also the one who put him back together every time. That’s what it comes down to, in the end. Clint doesn’t know how to fit his pieces back together. He needs Mikhail. How is he supposed to explain that to Laura? How is he supposed to tell her that she can’t help him?

A hand touches his face, and Clint startles awake. He rolls out of bed and down to the floor, instantly on his knees, like he’s been trained to do.

Except this time he rolls right into somebody else. There’s a soft grunt, and a surprised noise, and Clint blinks himself fully awake to find himself on the floor in front of a sleepy looking kid.

“Dad? Are you okay?”

“Uh…” Clint looks around, trying to reconcile what he expected with what he’s actually seeing, and not doing so well with it.

“Dad?”

_Cooper._

“Cooper,” he says, the name both bitter and sweet on his tongue. He carefully reaches out and touches him, half-expecting him to disappear under his fingers. “You’re real.”

Cooper tilts his head. “What?”

“Sorry,” Clint says. “I was expecting something—some _one_ else. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

He still looks confused. “Dad, I don’t know what you’re saying.”

“Clint.”

Clint turns his head. Laura’s propped up on an elbow, one hand stretched out towards him. “English, love,” she says.

“ _Chto?_ ” Then he realizes. “Oh. _Izvinit_.” He winces, forces the switch in his mind. “ _Sorry_. Christ. I’m sorry, Coop.”

“I just wanted to make sure you were here,” Cooper says. “Nate came and asked me and I wasn’t sure.” He looks at Clint, a hint of worry in his eyes.

“It’s fine,” Clint assures him. He stands up and pulls Cooper into a hug. “I’m just still on mission mode a bit. It’s fine.”

“Okay,” Cooper says, still sounding worried.

“Go tell Nate I’m still here,” Clint says. “I’ll meet you guys downstairs. We can make pancakes or something, okay?”

Cooper nods and leaves. Clint waits until the door closes, then sits heavily on the bed. “Fuck,” he says. Laura puts a hand on his shoulder. He flinches, but then reaches back to keep it there.

“You okay?” she murmurs.

He shakes his head. “Yeah, I…I’m used to doing that.” He gestures to the floor. “Come on. We’ve got pancakes to make.”

He can tell that she wants to ask more, but he doesn’t know what to tell her. The more he says out loud, the more fucked up he realizes the situation was. He tries to imagine Coulson ordering him to his knees like that, and he can't.

_It was just a power play._

Which he _knows_ , but still. His body’s been trained to work ahead of his mind. Hard to break the habit.

They go downstairs, and the day starts. Clint tries to find the rhythm of his family again, tries to lose himself in the chaos of making breakfast and packing backpacks and sending kids off to school. The school year’s almost done, only a couple days left, and they’re brimming with the excitement of summer.

Clint and Laura finally get them all out the door and down to wait for the school bus. Lila tugs at his hand when it arrives. “You’ll be here when we get back, right?”

“Of course,” he says. “I promise, Lila. I’m not going anywhere.”

She smiles at him then, beautiful and pure, and hops on the bus after her brothers. Clint watches it peel away in a cloud of dust and tries to make sense of what he’s feeling.

“They’re glad to have you home,” Laura says. “

“I know.” He swallows. “I shouldn’t have left.”

“Clint, you couldn’t have known—”

“I know that,” he interrupts. “Freak accident. I get it. I mean I shouldn’t have gone in the first place. After Thanos, and everything? I should’ve stayed home.”

She’s quiet.

“Look at them,” he says, gesturing at the distant bus. “They’re terrified they’re going to come back and I’ll be gone again. That’s not right, Laura. Kids shouldn’t be worried about that kind of thing.”

“But you’re done.” She takes his hand. “No more missions, no more time travel. You’re finished.”

“Well yeah, but—”

“No buts. You’re done, that’s all there is to it. You’ll still be here when they get back, and the more they see it’s true, they’ll start to believe it.” She tugs his arm. “Come on. We need to clean up the kitchen.”

Clint swallows back the rest of his thoughts and nods. “Okay.”

They go into the kitchen, and she starts picking up dishes. When she notices him standing there, she tilts her head. “Problem?”

He jerks a little, pulled out of a memory. “No. I’m okay.” He looks around. “What do you want me to do?”

She gives him directions, and he does them, and that’s how the next few days go. They figure out pretty quickly that Clint doesn’t do well with being unguided. He’s so used to Mikhail ordering him around, or Lukas or Elizaveta, that he finds himself spending a lot of time waiting to be told what to do. It’s annoying, more than anything. He _knows_ that Laura’s not going to punish him for doing something she doesn’t like, but he has a hard time convincing his brain of that some days. Easier to just wait for directions.

Not that he doesn’t try or anything, but it tends to not go well. One day she comes downstairs to find him sitting on the floor, surrounded by arrows while he fiddles with a bow. It’s one of his older ones, an early prototype of the trick bow he uses now, and he’s trying to get it fixed for Lila. She’s getting good with the basic ones. He loses himself in the tinkering, finding that it calms his racing thoughts for awhile. He can almost understand why Tony liked machines so much. They’re certainly easier.

Clint’s so focused on what he’s doing that he doesn’t hear her come into the room. Then a hand settles on his shoulder. “What are you doing?” She sounds a little exasperated, a little annoyed, and the tone of it kicks something into gear in his mind.

He immediately jumps to his feet, dropping the bow and scattering arrows. “I’m sorry,” he says, eyes wide and hands up. “I was just fixing the bow, I didn’t mean—”

Laura backs up, mimicking his position. “Clint,” she says. “ _Clint_.”

He stops, biting his tongue hard enough to taste blood, and closes his eyes. When he has himself under control, he drops his hands back down. “Sorry,” he says, forcing the word out in English. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

She looks at him with a searching gaze. “What was it this time?”

“I don’t know.” He sits back down on the floor, picking up the bow again. “Just…can you be louder? When you’re walking around?”

Laura laughs. “You want me to wear a cowbell or something?”

“No.” Clint tries for a smile. “Just don’t sneak up on me.”

She considers him for a long moment, then nods. “Okay. No more sneaking.” She walks away, and Clint tries to return his attention to what he’s doing.

Ten minutes later, his hands are still shaking. He abandons the project and goes to see if there’s anything she wants him to do.

It keeps happening like that. Little things set him off, and he has no idea what it’ll be. Someone’s tone of voice, or their posture, or the way they hold themselves. He’ll be fine, _totally fine_ , and then something will happen, and he’s suddenly back in the HYDRA base. It’s almost worse than the nightmares, in a way. At least those he knows to expect. Those he can wake up from and re-ground himself in reality. The flashbacks are just…hell.

Clint hides it as best he can, not wanting to scare the kids, but it doesn’t always work. One afternoon he’s shooting arrows with Lila, working on her aiming. “Okay,” he says, marking a couple small X’s on the tree. “You’re used to hitting the bullseye. You know where to aim to hit that. Now we’re gonna practice hitting other things.”

Lila nocks an arrow. “I can do it,” she says confidently, and he grins at her.

“Yeah you can,” he says, pointing at one of them. “Okay. This is your target.”

Suddenly the world vanishes around him, the warmth of the sun exchanged for the cold florescent lights of a large room, the knife in his hand replaced by a gun. He sees Mikhail, and Natov, and feels the weight of the command pressing down on him.

_This is your target. Kill him._

_No._

_This is your target. Kill him._

_I don’t want to._

_This is your target. Kill him._

_Please don’t make me._

There’s a stabbing pain in his thigh, like a gunshot wound, and Clint collapses to the ground. He’s distantly aware of screaming. _Lila,_ he thinks hazily, but then he realizes it’s coming from _him_ , and he chokes it off into a strangled noise. There’s a knife sticking out of his leg. It’s bleeding. Did he do that?

There are hands on his face, and someone is repeating his name over and over. He blinks. Looks up to see Laura.

“You can’t be here,” he tells her, hand cupping her face. “You can’t, it’s not safe for you, you have to _go_ —”

He reaches for the knife, but she grabs his hands before he can reach it. “Clint,” she says again. “Look at me. Look at me!” He drags his eyes up to meet her face, and she squeezes his hands. “Clint. It’s June twenty-fourth. It’s 2025. You’re home. You’re in Missouri. I’m here, and Lila’s here. You’re safe. You’re not back there anymore. You’re here, with us.”

Clint swallows hard. “June,” he says, grasping at the word. “2025.”

“Good. Tell me three things you can see right now.”

“Tree.” He takes a breath, slowly coming back to himself. _This isn’t Germany. Mikhail’s not here._ “Arrows. Grass.”

“That’s right, baby. Tell me two things you feel.”

“Cold. Tired.” _This isn’t Germany. Mikhail’s not here._

“Tell me something you can hear.”

Clint looks at her. “You,” he says, and he reaches up for her face again. Tears blur his vision. “I—I hear you.” _This isn’t Germany. Mikhail’s not here_

“Good,” Laura murmurs, voice utterly relieved, and she pulls him into a hug. “Good, baby. You’re safe now, okay? You’re safe. Stay right here with me. You’re safe.”

She holds him while he shudders himself back into some semblance of normalcy. Lila comes over too, a little hesitant at first, but Clint holds her hand anyway. _This isn’t Germany. Mikhail’s not here_

Eventually, they break apart. Clint looks at the knife in his leg. “Shit,” he mutters, poking at it.

“No swearing,” Lila reprimands him, and he forces a smile, twisting to kiss her on the forehead.

“Do I need to call someone?” Laura asks. “A doctor, or…”

“No.” Clint steels himself, then yanks the knife out. It hurts like hell, and he quickly strips off his shirt, pressing it to the wound. He wipes the knife off and shoves it in his pocket.

Laura sighs. “I have _bandages_ ,” she says, and sends Lila to get their first aid kit. Clint watches her go. His hands are shaking, and he’s not sure if it’s from the pain or the flashback.

“I scared her,” he says.

“She’ll be okay.”

“She just watched her father lose his shit at a tree and stab himself in the leg. How is that okay?”

“I’ll talk to her about it.”

Clint grabs at her wrist. “Don’t. I don’t want them to know what happened.”

Laura twists her arm so they’re holding hands instead. “I’ll give her a condensed version,” she says. “Clint, they’re not stupid. They know something went wrong on the mission. They’re worried about you. We all are.”

“I don’t want them to _know_ ,” he says again. “They’re just kids, Laura, they don’t need to know—“

“ _I_ don’t even know!”

The sentence is harsh, and loud, and it makes Clint recoil a bit from her. Laura freezes, then closes her eyes. “ _I_ don’t know,” she repeats quietly, “what happened to you. So you don’t have to worry about it, because I can’t tell them things that I don’t know.”

She sounds hurt, even though she tries to hide it. Laura always says she knows him, but he knows her too. Knows that she _desperately_ wants him to tell her what happened. She’ll never ask, but she wants to know. He can see it written all over her.

Clint wants to tell her. He really does. He just doesn’t know how. Every time he starts the conversation in his head, he ends up at a loss for words. It’s already difficult to explain the little habits he’s picked up—the speaking in Russian, the way he refuses to sleep in darkness, the constant apologies and the jumpiness. How is he supposed to explain the rest of it? How is he supposed to tell her about Mikhail?

Because that’s probably the craziest part of this whole thing. Mikhail is the person who continually broke him. And yet, Mikhail is also the one who put him back together every time. That’s what it comes down to, in the end. Clint doesn’t know how to fit his pieces back together. He _needs_ Mikhail. How is he supposed to explain that to Laura? How is he supposed to tell her that she can’t help him?

Lila comes back with the first aid kit, and they wrap up Clint’s leg. Together, they help him limp into the house and prop it up on a chair. Lila gets him a coffee, and Laura brings him a blanket, and they all try to pretend that everything is fine.

Later that night, Clint finds the knife in his pocket while getting ready for bed. He flicks it open, then sticks it under the faucet to wash off the dried blood.

Laura knocks on the door. He jumps at the sound. “You okay in there?”

“I’m fine, hon,” he calls back. He shuts the water off, feeling vaguely like he’s been caught doing something wrong. “I’ll be out in a second.”

The light catches the silver blade as he dries it. Clint turns it over in his hand. Remembers all those nights spent with his mirror shard, cutting into his arm over and over. The clarity it had brought him. The fascination of watching his skin split open and heal. The calmness he used to feel.

The urge to do it again, to bring that peace back, is almost overwhelming. As if in a trance, he raises the blade in his left hand and places it against his arm.

_It’s not a healthy coping mechanism,_ he thinks to himself. _You shouldn’t be doing this._

He does it anyway.

The first touch of the knife against his arm is like gasping in air after being underwater. He watches it slice through his skin, watches the blood well up around it. Watches it reseal itself up behind the knife. Slower than it used to, which is interesting, but it still works. The blood drips down from his arm and splashes onto the white sink.

Clint inhales sharply and does it again, letting his breath out as the pain crests, then fades. The day seems to fade away with it, the stress and anxiety of the flashback rolling off him like the droplets of blood. He does another cut. Then another. He’s missed this, in a horrible, fucked up way. Missed the sensation of it.

Laura knocks again. “Nate wants to say goodnight.”

“I _said_ I’ll be out in a second,” Clint says. Snaps, really, and he winces at the tone.

There’s a pause, and then a quiet, “Okay.”

Clint wipes it off and tucks the knife into the back of the cabinet, then cleans up the blood from his arm and the sink. Once all the evidence is gone, he opens the door and scoops up Nate, who’s waiting in the bedroom doorway. “Come on, buddy. Let’s get you to bed.”

She’s waiting up for him when he comes back, nestled under the covers with a book. He strips off his shirt and eases his pants over the wound in his thigh.

“How is it?”

“Huh?” He looks at his leg. “It’s fine. It’ll heal. Most things do.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Most things?”

Clint doesn’t answer that. He just gets into bed next to her, tossing off everything but the sheet. Another fun super serum fact—he runs hotter now. He suspects it’ll be nice in winter, but for summer purposes, it really just kind of sucks.

Laura sets her book down. “Clint.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You _stabbed_ yourself.”

“I’m aware.” He gently probes at the bandage. “It was just a flashback. They happen.”

She makes a soft noise. “You said you’d find someone to talk to.”

“I’m working on it.”

“It’s been over a month.”

“I said I’m _working_ on it.” His voice is tight. “Laura, you told me weren’t going to push it.”

She turns to face him. “I’m not pushing it.”

“Feels like you are.” He clenches his fists, focusing on how his fingernails dig into his palms. _Why are you yelling at her? She’s trying to help._

“I just want to make sure you’re okay.” She reaches out for him and he pulls away, hating himself even more. “I love you.”

He rolls onto his side, pulls the sheet over himself. “I’m gonna sleep, okay? Leave the light on.”

She’s quiet for a moment. Then her hand gently presses on his arm. “I’m worried about you,” she whispers, so quietly he isn’t sure if she meant him to hear it.

Clint reaches up and covers her hand with his. “I know,” he whispers back, staring at the wall, pretending that he doesn’t also see the grey cinder blocks of his cell. _That makes two of us._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy wednesday, here's your weekly dose of sadness :D 
> 
> I'm on [tumblr!](https://feedmecookiesnow.tumblr.com/)


	55. Chapter 54

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So this is how the summer goes for him. Clint smiles and pretends things are fine, pretends like he’s not clinging to his sanity by his fingernails. Laura watches him with worried eyes and tries to be present for him without being obtrusive. They orbit around each other, together without really being together. They share a bed, but he doesn’t touch her, and she doesn’t push the issue. She just smiles softly and tells him she loves him and holds him through his nightmares. It makes him feel more guilty.

The flashbacks start to get worse after that—more frequent, more intense. Clint does his best to hide them, but they make him so twitchy and edgy that he can barely function. He starts sleeping longer and later, preferring the comfort of nightmares to the constant uncertainty of the daytime. He also finds himself drinking more. HYDRA’s serum makes it more _difficult_ for him to get drunk, it’s not impossible, and he just doggedly experiments until he finds the right mixture of things. It doesn’t make the flashbacks go away, but it at least helps numb the anxiety and fear. Slows the flashes of terror so he has a moment to respond.

Laura watches him with sad eyes. She doesn’t pry, but she doesn’t leave him alone to wallow either, and Clint can’t decide if he’s grateful for that or not.

He finally gives into her gentle requests and finds a SHIELD-approved therapist. He makes it through a total of two sessions before he snaps at the guy. “You weren’t there,” he snarls, his voice shaking. “You—stop talking to me like that. You have _no_ idea what it was like.”

The guy—Dr. Flynn, or whatever—looks at him through slim silver glasses. “I was not there,” he agrees. “That’s why I need you to tell me what happened. I’m here to help you process, Agent Barton, but—”

He breaks off with a pained shout, pressing a hand to his forehead. The water bottle that Clint threw at him bounces down to the floor and rolls across the carpet. Clint stares at it for a second, then at his own hands. _Did I just do that?_

“Agent—”

Clint jumps to his feet. “Don’t,” is all he says, trembling with either fear or rage. The name rings in his ears like an ultimatum, and he has to put a hand on the desk to stop himself from dropping to his knees. “Don’t call me that.”

“I apologize,” Flynn starts, but Clint is already leaving. He slams the door behind him and takes the stairs up. The door at the top gives easily with a kick and then he’s on the roof, blinking the sprinkle of rain out of his eyes.

He goes over to the edge and sits down, letting his legs dangle. The clouds overhead are dark and heavy. It’s a perfect match to his mood. He lets his gaze skim over the parking lot below, unconsciously counting the cars and people. _You can take the agent out of SHIELD…_

Clint shudders at the thought and pulls his jacket closer. “It’s just a name,” he says out loud. “It can’t _do_ anything.”

_Doesn’t mean you aren’t scared of it, you pathetic piece of—_

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a flask. The whiskey warms him as much as it dulls the sharp edge of his thoughts, and he ends up draining it over the course of the next hour. By the time he feels like he’s not going to shatter at the slightest movement, he’s soaked from the rain, shivering hard, and a little hazy.

“Gonna give yourself pneumonia,” he says to the sky, then remembers that he’s a fucking super-soldier or whatever now, and he probably _can’t_ get pneumonia. Probably can’t get sick from anything.

He glares at the clouds, then at the parking lot below. He’d managed convince Laura to let him drive himself this time, which is both good and bad. Good, because it means he doesn’t have to explain anything to her. Bad, because he probably shouldn’t be driving anywhere in this state. He might be falling apart on the inside, but at least he knows better than to drive like this.

“Not gonna end up like you,” he says, thinking of his father.

“Who are you talking to?”

Clint jumps, nearly losing his balance, and turns to see Nat. She’s sitting next to him, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, her hair loose around her shoulders.

“You’re here,” he says, a little surprised.

“I’m always here.” She smiles a little and pokes his shoulder. “I’ve never left you.”

He takes another drink from the flask, then remembers it’s empty. “Never, huh?”

“Never.”

“What about when you died? You left me then.”

She looks sad. “I didn’t want to, Clint. If there’d been another way…”

“There _was_ another way.”

“No, there wasn’t. Between the two of us, I was the best choice, and you knew it. You still know it.”

He scowls. “It should’ve been me.”

“You have a _family_ , Clint.”

“You had a family too, Nat. Just because we weren’t blood doesn’t mean we weren’t your family.” He points at her. “Every person on that team was your family, and you just went and jumped off a cliff like they didn’t mean a damn thing to you.”

“They meant _everything_ to me,” she snaps. “They _were_ the reason I jumped off that cliff. I saw a chance to bring our family back together, and I fucking took it. How dare you say that.”

Clint looks up at the sky, blinking the rain out of his eyes. “It still should’ve been me,” he says.

“Why? So that you wouldn’t be here right now?”

_Yes,_ he wants to say. But she’s got that look in her eye, the one that usually means he’s about to get his ass whupped, so he just clenches his jaw shut and turns away. Ghost or not, she still scares him a little.

“I know you’re hurting,” she says finally. “From all of it. From me, and the Snap, and Mikhail, and everything else that’s happened to you. But killing yourself isn’t the answer to it, Clint. It wouldn’t have made things better then, and it’s not going to make things better now.”

“I’m not going to kill myself,” he growls.

Her fingers brush over his arm, and suddenly there’s a series of red lines marring his skin. Short hash marks. The ghosts of his knife habit. “No?”

He yanks his arm away. The marks fade. “That’s not suicide,” he says. “That just…it helps me think. Makes things clearer.”

Nat sighs. “Clint.”

“Just don’t,” he says. “Nat, just…just stop, okay?”

“No. I won’t stop.” Her fingers brush across his face, then tighten on his jaw in a bruising grip. “You can’t keep going like this, Clint. Something’s gonna give.”

“Then let it give,” he says, pulling his face away. He gets to his feet, balancing precariously on the slippery bricks. “Let it give. I don’t care.”

“I care. Laura cares. Sam and Wanda and all the rest care. You’re not alone in this, Clint. Stop playing the part of a martyr for five seconds and let us _help_ you.”

“I don’t need your pity,” he growls through clenched teeth. “Or your help.”

“Then what do you need?”

_Mikhail. I need Mikhail._

He shakes his head. “Just go away, Nat. Please.” The irony of the request isn’t lost on him, considering all those months he spent with just Loki in his head for company, when he was begging for her to come back. But he feels so volatile and fragile right now, and he’s pretty sure that if she says another word, he’s going to crumble into pieces.

There’s the barest touch along his face, and the press of gentle lips to his cheek. Then she’s gone, and he’s alone on the roof again.

Clint stays up there until he’s sober, until his phone buzzes with three missed calls from Laura, until he feels like he has himself under some semblance of control. Then he sends her a quick text, wipes the rain and tears from his face, and stumbles back down the stairs and out to his car.

He quits going to therapy after that. On the days he’s supposed to go, he fills up his flask, gets in the car, and drives somewhere else instead. A park. The shores of a lake. Another roof. A cafe. He spends his therapy hour drinking, hoping to dull the pain at least a little bit, and then he drives back. Smiles at Laura. Pretends everything is okay. It’s a lie by omission, and it makes him sick for multiple reasons, but he keeps doing it anyway. He doesn’t know what else to do.

The kids help, at least. They all know something isn’t quite right—even Nate picks up on it—but they just keep treating him like their dad, and he clings to that little bit of normalcy. Lila is a little more hesitant around him, but when he goes several weeks without losing it in front of her, she relaxes back into her bubbly self. They don’t talk about the tree incident, and the stab wound is long healed, so it’s easy to pretend nothing happened at all. The flashbacks still happen, but he learns to muscle his way through them, and tries to hide how much they leave him shaking.

Nat is the only ghost that doesn’t come back to haunt him. It’s like those days after the Cube, except at least this time he’s not seeing Loki instead. He gives thanks for small miracles and tries to pretend he doesn’t miss her.

So this is how the summer goes for him. Clint smiles and pretends things are fine, pretends like he’s not clinging to his sanity by his fingernails. Laura watches him with worried eyes and tries to be present for him without being obtrusive. They orbit around each other, together without really being together. They share a bed, but he doesn’t touch her, and she doesn’t push the issue. She just smiles softly and tells him she loves him and holds him through his nightmares. It makes him feel more guilty.

“I’m sorry,” Clint tells her one day. He’s still in bed, still in his pajamas, watching her gather the laundry.

“For what?” She holds out her hand. He obediently tugs off his shirt and gives to her.

“For hurting you. I don’t mean to.”

“I know you don’t,” she says, and that’s the other thing he loves about her. She doesn’t try to pretend he’s _not_ hurting her.

“I’m sorry it’s taking so long,” he says. “To get better.”

She gently kisses his forehead. “I married you,” she murmurs. “I said for better or for worse, and I meant it. It doesn’t come with a time limit. I’m here if it takes days, and I’m here if it takes years, and I’ll still be here even if it takes a lifetime.”

Clint closes his eyes. “I don’t deserve you.”

“It’s not about what you deserve, love. It’s about a promise I made to you.” She kisses him again, then picks up their laundry basket. “You’re my forever, Clint. I’m not leaving you. Not over this.”

Laura disappears down the stairs, and Clint watches her go. He must have done something good in a past life, he’s pretty sure, because that’s the only way he could have ended up with a literal angel as his wife.

He’s still looking at the door when Nate appears in it, dressed in a bright red shirt with a yellow cape billowing behind him. “Dad.”

Clint pulls himself out of his thoughts. “Yeah, bud?”

“Come play with us?” He holds out a Nerf gun.

Clint smiles. “Sure, kiddo.”

He pulls some clothes on and follows his son downstairs. The living room is a chaotic mess, having been turned into some kind of battleground. Cooper leaps out from behind a pile of cushions, his own Nerf gun aimed steadily at Nate. “Hands up!” he shouts, then his eyes widen when he sees Clint. “Dad?”

Clint moves quick, taking Nate’s gun and pushing him behind the couch. He nails Cooper in the chest with a dart and grins at him. “Never abandon your cover,” he says, and Cooper grins back before firing his own dart.

Nate passes Clint a gun, and they spend the afternoon playing. Laura makes them take it outside after Cooper nearly takes out her favorite vase, but all that does is give them more room to play. Lila teams up with Cooper when she comes back from her violin lesson, and then Nate betrays Clint with a dart to the nose, and then he spends the afternoon running and hiding as his children follow him around the farm. Clint swaps his Nerf gun for a water gun and soaks Cooper, but then Lila gets revenge with the hose. By the time Laura calls them in for dinner, they’re all dripping wet. She takes one look at them and moves the food outside, where they can dry off in the warmth of the fading sunlight.

Afterwards, they get things cleaned up and put away. Clint wrangles them into pajamas, and they all watch a movie together before sending the kids off to bed. The whole day is so apple-pie nice that it’s almost sickening, but Clint can’t stop himself from smiling. “That was great,” he says to Laura.

“I liked watching you play with them,” she admits. “It was…normal.”

“It was,” he agrees, thinking about how he didn’t have a single flashback the whole afternoon. Didn’t drink either. “I needed that.”

“Next time I’ll join,” she says. “We’ll take them down.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he says, and he kisses her.

It’s not like their other kisses. It’s not meant for communication, or comfort. It’s hot, and hungry, and he finds his hands sliding up the back of her shirt.

“Are you sure?” she asks, pulling back slightly. “Clint.”

“Yeah,” he says, holding her. Elizaveta is still there in the back of his mind, but he doesn’t _see_ her. All he sees, all he feels, is Laura. “Yeah, babe. I’m sure.”

“Okay,” she says. “You let me know if you’re not.”

“I promise.”

He unhooks her bra with a flick of his hand, and she smirks. “Showoff.”

“That’s why you married me,” Clint says, and he kisses her again.

It’s not perfect, their reunion. It’s messy, and a little desperate, full of awkward moments and fumbling fingers. Almost reminiscent of the first time they ever slept together. But they make it work, like they always have, and it ends up with them tangled together in each other’s arms, both content and smiling.

“Fucking love you,” he says, playing with her hair.

“Love you too,” she says. They fall asleep like that, warm and safe and comfortable in the dim glow of the nightlight she’d bought for him his first week back. Clint watches her face smooth out as he drifts off himself, and thinks that maybe—just maybe—he really can do this. Maybe he doesn’t need Mikhail after all.

Except then he wakes up three hours later from a nightmare, of course, because his dreams are not on board with the way he’s feeling. He sits up and gasps for air, feeling the sting of a whip on his back.

Laura makes a soft sound. “Babe?”

“It’s fine,” he manages. “Nightmare. Go back to sleep.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” He gets out of bed and fumbles around until he can find pants. “I’m just going to get some water, okay?”

“Okay,” she murmurs, still half-asleep.

Clint goes downstairs and fills a glass at the sink, hand gripped tight around the glass to stop himself from shaking. It had been a particularly bad one this time. He’d been back in the basement cell, chained to the ceiling and screaming as Mikhail cut into him with the whip. Loki had been there too, watching and quietly laughing.

_You lied to me, Agent Barton. This needs to be punished. Actions have consequences. You broke a rule. You lied to me._

“I couldn’t tell you,” he whispers, bracing himself against the counter. His legs tremble and he sinks down to his knees, pressing his forehead to the cabinets. “I had—I couldn’t _tell_ you. I had to keep them safe.”

“Ah,” says a silky voice, and Clint flinches as a hand settles on his neck. Loki strokes over his skin with a terrifyingly gently touch. “But you didn’t keep them safe, did you?”

“I did,” Clint says through gritted teeth. “It worked out. The future’s intact. I’m _home_.”

“Are you sure?” Cool lips brush his ear. “Maybe this is a dream.” Loki’s voice morphs, changes into the quiet, steady tones of Mikhail. “Maybe you never left me at all.”

“I’m home,” Clint insists, not turning to look. “It’s July. It’s 2025. I’m at home, and I’m safe, and you are _not_ here.”

“Minds are easily manipulated, Agent Barton. And I have so many tools at my disposal.” His fingers pet into Clint’s hair, comforting and familiar. “How sure are you that this is what is real?”

“It has to be,” he whispers. “It has to be. Please.”

“You lied to me,” Mikhail whispers back. “Maybe now you are lying to yourself as well.”

“It’s real,” Clint says, feeling tears drip down his face. “It’s real, it’s real, it’s real.”

“Ah, _ptichka_.” Mikhail’s voice is soothing, and sympathetic, and that more than anything makes Clint snap.

He turns and strikes out, shoving hard at Mikhail’s chest. “Get out of my head!” he shouts, and then his eyes go wide, because it’s not Mikhail that he’s pushing at all.

It’s Nate.

His son goes flying backwards, his head hitting the wall opposite with a sharp crack. There’s a moment of stunned silence where they both stare at each other, Clint’s hand still outstretched like he might be able to save him.

Then Nate’s eyes fill with tears, and he lets out an earsplitting wail, holding the back of his head. The sound of it shocks Clint into action and he scrambles across the floor. “Nate,” he says, reaching out.

Nate kicks him.

It doesn’t hurt, but the shock of it makes Clint pull back. He hesitates, hands open and palms showing. “Nate,” he says, his voice shaking.

Then Laura is there. She shoves him aside and picks Nate up, cradling him in her arms. Lila and Cooper tumble into the kitchen after him, both rubbing sleep from their eyes.

“Ice pack,” Laura orders Lila, pulling Nate’s hand from his head to check the damage. “Easy, love. It’s okay. It’s just a bump. You’re not bleeding.” She holds him tighter and looks at Clint, eyes narrowed. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Clint says, hands shaking. “I thought he—I thought—he touched me and I—”

Lila hands her an ice pack and she presses it to the back of Nate’s head, starting a fresh round of crying. She makes soothing noises and rocks him gently. “You pushed him,” she says. “Is that what happened?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Clint says. “I was—I wasn’t here, I didn’t know it was him.” His words all trip over themselves, excuses and explanations falling from his lips with every breath. “I saw Mikhail—” He stops himself, shakes his head. “Nate. Buddy. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t know it was you.” He reaches out again. Nate cringes away from him into Laura’s arms, and Clint yanks his hands back like he’s been burned. “Shit,” he says. “Nate—?”

“I think you should leave,” Laura says. It’s calm, but forceful, and leaves no room for argument. “ _Now_ , Clint. I’ll take care of this.”

Clint looks around desperately. Sees the betrayal in Nate’s eyes, and the confusion in Lila and Cooper’s. “I…” he starts, and then he stops again, because there is nothing he can say to make this better. Nothing.

He gets to his feet. Takes the keys from the counter. Walks out to the car. When he looks back, he can see them through the kitchen window. Huddled around each other, heads low.

Shame floods him then, hot and choking. He starts the car and presses the pedal to the floor, peeling out of the driveway in a spray of gravel. He doesn’t have shoes, or a shirt, or even anywhere to go. He just drives, taking turns at random, getting away as fast as he can, and doesn’t stop until the sun is over the horizon.

Then he pulls over on the side of the highway, buries his face in his hands, and sobs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate chapter title: sad, then happy, then DEPRESSION  
> (But I have it on good authority though that things start getting better after this so)
> 
> I'm on [tumblr!](https://feedmecookiesnow.tumblr.com/)


	56. Chapter 55

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I get it,” Bucky says. “Trust me. You wanna do it on your own. You think you shouldn’t have given in, or should’ve been stronger. You lie awake at night and think about all the ways you fucked up, and you hate what you see when you look in the mirror. You think they broke you for good.”
> 
> “Yeah,” Clint admits.
> 
> “Well, they didn’t,” Bucky tells him. “You’re still here. Still kicking. You got away.”

Clint does not go back home.

He can’t, honestly. How could he? Every time he closes his eyes, he sees Nathaniel’s face, and Laura’s barely concealed rage, and hears the quiet order to leave. He _hurt_ them. He hurt all of them. He doesn’t have the right to go crawling back. He doesn’t deserve them at all.

So he keeps driving. He goes east for no other reason than it sounds like a nice direction, and it also happened to be the road he ended up on. At some point he realizes he’s still in his pajamas, so he reverts back to his circus days and steals clothes and shoes from his first stop. They don’t really fit him, so he does it again at the next one, and then the next until he finds something he likes. On the last attempt, the truck driver he robs comes after him with a baseball bat. Clint takes him down easily, breaks the bat in half with his bare hands, and uses the broken chunk to pin the guy by the shirt to the side of his own truck. It’s more aggressive than he meant it to be, but it makes him feel better anyway.

In Louisville, he ditches the car and mails the keys back to Laura, along with a short note that says _I’m sorry._ Then he steals someone’s wallet and uses the cash to buy himself a bus ticket to Indianapolis, and from there he goes to Cincinnati. He spends a couple days there holed up in a safe house that takes him three tries to find. He’d used it once on a mission with Natasha, and although most of the supplies are gone, there’s some food and liquor left over. Clint spends the days drinking every last drop of it and watching shitty TV.

On the third day, someone knocks on the door. Clint stumbles over to it, knife at the ready, and opens it to see a postal worker standing there. “Hello,” she says. “Package for you, I need you to sign for it.”

“Okay,” Clint grunts, hazily aware of how shitty he feels, which is probably barely a reflection on how shitty he looks. He scrawls something that might be a name on her digital pad, then takes the package she hands him.

It’s from SHIELD, because of course it is. The postal worker probably was too. He hasn’t exactly been making an effort to hide himself or anything. But as long as they don’t send anyone to bring him back, he doesn’t give a shit that they know where to find him. This is technically their safe house, anyway. If they want to send him mail, more power to them.

Clint opens the package. It’s a bow—his collapsible one that opens up into a recurve, his favorite—along with a quiver of arrows, a phone and a note. The phone has one number programmed in it, and the note says, _Call me._

It’s in Wanda’s handwriting. Clint checks the bow for trackers, skims his fingers along the quiver. He doesn’t find any. Satisfied, he tucks them both into the duffle bag he stole a couple stops ago and presses the number on the phone screen.

Wanda answers almost immediately. “Clint!”

“Yeah, it’s me. What’s with the bow?”

“I thought it would make you feel better. Laura said you didn’t leave with much.”

“Uh-huh. What the hell do you want?” He doesn’t mean it to come out so angry, but it does, and he just rolls with it.

“I want you to go back to your family, Clint. They’re worried sick about you, you know that? We all are.”

“I’m fine,” he snaps. “I don’t need you to worry.”

“Well, we are anyway. Laura told us what happened, Clint. You need to talk to her.”

“She doesn’t want to talk to me,” Clint says. “Trust me. I know.”

“Clint—”

“Drop it, Wanda. Look, I know you’re just trying to help. I get it. But right now I need to be alone. Okay?”

“Clint…”

“Thanks for the bow. Tell my family…” He trails off and shakes his head. “Tell them something nice, honestly. Anything other than the truth.”

Her voice is quiet. “What is the truth?”

“That I’m losing it,” he says honestly. “I’m losing my mind and I don’t know what to do about it, because I’m pretty sure the only person who can fix it is still in 1965.”

“That’s not—”

“So tell them something nice,” he says again. “Tell them they helped as much as they could. Tell them they were great, and I just need some time and then I’ll be home soon.” His voice cracks a little. “Lie to them for me, will you? I don’t think I can do it right now.”

He hangs up. Picks up his bag, leaves the phone on the table, and walks out without locking the door. Walks to the nearby bus station and says, “What’s going east?”

She gives him the schedule. He buys a ticket to D.C., takes his bag, and settles down to wait.

* * *

D.C. is nothing new. He’s been here hundreds of times, is as familiar with it as he is with New York. He can practically feel SHIELD watching him, and a part of him expects half a dozen agents to suddenly accost him in the street. But they don’t. No one bothers him.

Clint gets a hotel for a few nights. He tries going out to a bar, but there’s too many people, and it ends up making his skin crawl. So he just buys a six pack and heads up to a random rooftop, preferring to drink alone and listen to the city.

He’s halfway through it when there’s a commotion down below. Some thugs in the alleyway, nothing special. Except they’re surrounding a girl, pressing her against the wall, and she looks absolutely terrified, her hands frantically trying to fend off their advances.

Clint is moving before he can really think about it. He yanks his bow from the bag, slings the quiver on, and sneaks onto the fire escape. The guys below are laughing, drunkenly gathered in a circle, and there are memories beating at the inside of his mind, demanding to be seen again—

He’s not sure how it happens, exactly. All he knows is that one second he’s standing on the fire escape, bow drawn back to his ear. A heartbeat later he’s on the ground, surrounded by arrows and blood and groaning bodies.

“Go,” he says to the girl. She’s staring at him, eyes wide. “Seriously. Get out of here.”

“Who are you?”

_Ain’t that the goddamn question._ After a moment, he just shakes his head. “Just go, okay?”

He turns away from her and surveys the carnage. They’re all alive, at least, which is more than he expected from himself. He retrieves his arrows and tries to think of something to say. Ideally, it would be something pithy and quotable. But when he looks down into the rage-twisted face of one of them, all he can manage, “She told you _no_ , asshole.”

“Fuck you,” the guy says, hand pressed to his bleeding leg. “Who the hell are you?”

“I don’t know,” Clint tells him. “I’ve been asking myself that for days.” He takes the guy’s phone and dials 911. He gives them enough information to find the group, then wipes the phone clean and tosses it onto the guy’s chest. “Don’t ever do it again,” he says, pointing an arrow at him. “Or else I’ll be back.”

It’s a lie. He’s leaving. But the kid looks scared enough that Clint feels like the threat will keep him in line. He climbs up the fire escape, retrieves his bag, and starts heading east again, not bothering to check out of the hotel. They’ll figure it out.

* * *

Three days later he’s in Boston, picking at the remains of a vaguely edible burger in some run-down sports bar when Sam shows up. He plunks himself down in a chair next to Clint. “Caught the aftermath of your act in D.C.,” he says in lieu of greeting. “Any particular reason you filled up a couple of college kids with arrows?”

“She said no, and they didn’t listen.” Clint keeps his eyes on the TV, pretending to watch whatever football match is on. “Seemed like a good cause. Don’t know what you’re complaining about, anyway. No one died.”

“Uh-huh. Is that your thing now? You gonna go vigilante again?”

“Fuck you, Wilson.” Clint finally looks at him. “You weren’t even here for that shit, don’t act like you know anything about it.”

“Fair enough.” Sam orders another round “How you been?”

“Handling things well,” Clint says sarcastically. “Can’t you tell?”

“Obviously.” Sam slides him a beer. “You need to stop beating yourself up for what happened.”

Clint takes it. “That’s your sage advice, huh?”

“Did you know that drowning victims will drag down their rescuers just to keep themselves above water?”

“Christ,” Clint tries the beer and wrinkles his nose at the hoppy taste. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“No,” Sam says. “I’m just pointing out that desperate people will do anything in an attempt to stay afloat.”

“Oh. Very wise, Sam. Ten out of ten.” God, he’s such an _asshole_. Why do any of them bother coming after him?

“With my main point being, you shouldn’t be blaming yourself for the things that happened while you were gone. Particularly not things that were _literally_ tortured out of you. Just like you shouldn’t blame yourself for the things that are happening now. You're just trying to stay afloat."

Clint scoffs. “I shouldn’t, huh?” He pushes the beer away.

“Clint, you have post-traumatic stress disorder. A pretty severe case of it. The flashbacks, and the nightmares, and the drinking? That’s textbook—”

“Stop it,” Clint says. “Don’t—don’t give it excuses.”

“It’s not an excuse, it’s a diagnosis. One that’s treatable. If you let us help.” Sam looks at him with that pitying gaze, and Clint wants to punch him. “You can’t keep blaming yourself for what happened,” he says. “We got it all back on track, remember? Everything is safe.”

“Mikhail is still out there,” Clint says, finally voicing something that’s been on his mind for days. “If you didn’t find a body, he’s not dead. I know he’s not. Which means someone in 1965 still knows that time travel is a possibility.”

“We know. We have teams looking for him and the woman,” Sam says, and _that’s_ news to Clint. He sits up a little at that. “We’ll find him. It’s not your job to worry about that. It’s your job to heal. You don’t have to fix everything yourself.”

“I should fix my own damn mistakes,” Clint says.

“It wasn’t your mistake if you were tortured into it. What else would you have done? Died?”

“I should have.” Clint drums his fingers on the counter, still a little fixated on how there are people looking for Mikhail, and how badly he wants to be one of them. _How fucked up is that?_ “Instead of just telling them like a coward? Yeah. I should’ve died first. Steve would’ve. Nat would’ve. They had to completely wipe Bucky’s mind before he broke. And I just gave it all up after a few trips down memory lane.” He shudders, thinking about the Cube. “Coulson would be disappointed in me.”

Sam puts a hand on his wrist, stilling it. “None of that was your fault, Clint. What if they didn’t kill you? Huh? You really think you could’ve held out forever while they did that shit to you?”

“Yes,” Clint snaps, even though he knows it’s a lie. He’s been tortured before, he knows the principles behind it.

“Bullshit,” Sam says. “That’s bullshit, and you know it.”

“You’re bullshit.” He shrugs the hand off and pushes his plate away. “Fuck off, okay? I don’t want or need your pity.”

Sam sighs. “Clint.”

“Fuck _off_ ,” Clint says, getting up. “If you follow me, I’m gonna put an arrow in your head.”

“Your wife is worried about you.”

Clint pauses while shrugging on his jacket. “Yeah,” he finally says. “I know.”

“You should call her.”

“I can’t.”

“She wants you to.”

“I pushed my five year old into a wall, Sam, and she told me to leave. I don’t think she wants to talk to me at all.”

Sam shakes his head. “I know you didn’t mean to. She knows you didn’t mean to. _Nathaniel_ knows you didn’t mean to. He says he forgives you.”

Clint gapes at him. “How the fuck do you know that?”

A casual shrug. “We had a chat. Don't worry. I kept it appropriate. I told him some bad things happened to you while you were on a mission. And that sometimes when people are hurt that badly, they turn around and hurt others without meaning to.” He meets Clint’s eye. 

“Huh.” Clint feels like he should be mad that Sam played therapist to his kid without his permission, but honestly, he’s glad. He was worried that there’d been something irreparably broken between him and Nate. “I…thanks, I guess. For that.”

“He wants to talk to you,” Sam says. “You should call him.” He pushes a phone across the table.

Clint looks at it. “I’m not going back right now,” he says. “I can’t.”

“No one says you have to. But you should call, at least. Let your kids know you’re alive.”

He winces, but grabs the phone and shoves it in his pocket.

“I can’t go back,” he says. “I can’t. I _can’t_ , Sam. People say things—innocent things, day to day things, shit normal people say—and it’s like suddenly I’m back there and I hear his voice. I see him everywhere; it’s worse than Loki, and it’s killing me.”

“Clint,” Sam says, his face full of sympathy, and suddenly Clint can’t stand it anymore. He walks out.

He walks the streets for a long time, going nowhere in particular. The phone is a heavy weight in his pocket. He knows they’re probably tracking it, but honestly, he doesn’t really care. He isn’t trying to disappear. He just needs to be alone for awhile.

“You should call them,” a voice says, and he turns his head to see Nat walking next to him. She’s wearing a sweatshirt, and jeans, and a soft smile, and he can’t stop himself from sagging in relief.

“You’re back,” he says.

“Of course. Someone needs to be the voice of reason.” She reaches out and takes his hand. “Call your wife, Clint.”

He shakes his head. “I— Nat, I pushed Nathaniel into a _wall_. He was just standing there and I snapped and pushed him. I could have killed him!”

“But you didn’t,” she says.

“But I could have.”

“But you _didn’t_.” She raises an eyebrow. “So give yourself some grace, Clint, and call your damn family before I kick your teeth in. I didn’t die so you could spend your life hiding from them.”

Clint scowls, but he pulls his hand away and digs the phone out. “You’re a pain in my ass, Natasha.”

“Yeah, well, you need it sometimes.”

He dials and puts the phone to his ear. It’s late, he knows, and he’s not expecting an answer, so it’s a bit of a surprise when a sleepy voice picks up on the other end. “Hello?”

“Laura,” Clint says. “It’s me.”

“Clint?” There’s a shuffling noise, like she’s sitting up in bed. “Baby, oh my god. Are you okay? Where are you?”

“Boston,” he says. “I needed—I had to get away.”

Silence for a moment, and then, “That wasn’t quite what I meant, love, when I told you to go.”

“I know.” He ruffles his hair and leans against the wall. The cold of the bricks leeches through his jacket. “Laura. I’m…I’m sorry. God, I’m so fucking sorry. I feel like shit about it.”

“You should,” she says, but her voice softens. “But I know you didn’t mean to. And I know you’ll never do it again.”

“I won’t,” he says, a little desperately. “I swear. I didn’t mean to that time. It was just—“ He rubs his hair again, searching for the words to explain it. “It was like I was there again. In the base. Hearing his voice. And I thought I was pushing him, but then it wasn’t him at all. It was Nate.” He sinks down to the ground, unable to keep standing. “Is…is he okay?”

“He’s fine,” she says. “He’s got a bump on his head and he’s milking it for all it’s worth.”

Clint huffs out a short laugh. “You let him have ice cream for dinner, didn’t you?”

“Yep.” She sighs. “He’s worried about you. Wants to know what he did wrong.”

He swallows back tears. “Can I…can I talk to him?”

“He’s sleeping, now. It’s almost midnight. I don’t want to wake him.”

“Can I talk to him tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

Relief floods him. He’d been worried she’d say no, worried that she’d kick him out and cut him off. Not that he would have blamed her for it, but it’s nice to hear all the same. “Thank you, Laura.”

She hums softly in agreement. “You know I still love you.”

“I know.”

“You still have a place here.”

“I know.”

“You’re not your father.”

He closes his eyes and bangs the back of his head against the brick wall. “How the fuck do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Read me like a book from a thousand miles away.”

“Because I _know_ you, Clint. What else would you be thinking about?”

“Lots of things,” he says, but she’s got a point.

“You didn’t take a belt to him,” she says. “You had a flashback, and you reacted to that. It was an accident. We all know it. And no one is mad at you. We just want you to come home.”

Clint buries his face in his free hand and tries not to start crying. “I can’t, Laura. Not yet. I’m…I’m not safe to be around right now.” He shakes his head. “I don’t want to risk it again. Not until I’ve got my head on straight.”

“Is the therapy not helping?”

He winces, but he can’t lie to her. Not anymore. “I, uh…I quit going. I quit a couple weeks ago. I’ve just been driving around for that hour. And…drinking.” He winces again. _You’re the worst fucking husband in the world._

There’s silence on her end for a long time, and then she says, “I see.”

“I’m sorry, Laura.” It’s inadequate, but it’s all he has to say. He lets out a shaky laugh. “Still want me to come home?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“And you think this _doesn’t_ hurt?”

“I’m…” He gestures helplessly. “I’m _sorry_.”

She sounds sad. “I heard you the first time.”

“Well, I don’t know what else to say.”

“I don’t either.”

More silence. Clint keeps the phone pressed to his ear and listens to her breathing. Clings to the sound like it’s a lifeline.

Finally, Laura says, “I do.”

“Do what?” His voice is rough.

“Still want you to come home.”

He swallows hard. “Are you sure?”

“I love you. That hasn’t changed.”

“I wasn’t sure,” he admits. “I’m hard to love, I think.”

The warmth is back in her voice, and she chuckles softly. “We never said it would be _easy_ , Clint. We just promised each other we’d try.”

He nods. “I can’t come back right now, Laura. I need some time. I need to get my head on right.”

“So make sure you text me,” she says. “Every day. At least let me know you’re alive. You owe me that much.”

“I will. I promise.” He rubs his eyes, swiping away the tears forming in them. “And I’ll call tomorrow. For Nate.”

“He’ll like that.” She yawns. She tries to keep it quiet, but he can tell.

“I’ll let you go,” he says, as much as he wants to stay on the line with her forever. “So you can sleep.”

“Okay.” She sniffles, and he realizes that she’s been crying too. “I love you, Clint. Stay safe for me? And come home soon.”

“I will. Love you too, Laura.”

He hangs up before he starts sobbing like a baby and shoves the phone back in his pocket. Next to him, Natasha puts a hand on his arm. “That so hard?”

“Shut up,” he says, leaning against her. “You’re still a pain in the ass.”

“Happy to help,” she murmurs, and kisses his forehead.

* * *

He calls the next day, and nearly starts crying _again_ when Nate comes on the phone with a worried-sounding, “Daddy, where are you?”

“Hey, buddy,” Clint says. “I’m in Boston right now.”

“Why?”

Clint takes a deep breath. “Sam told me he talked to you about my last mission. Is that true?”

“He said the bad guys hurt you,” Nate says solemnly. “And he had to rescue you.”

“Well, that’s all true. I got hurt pretty bad, kiddo. There were a lot of things that happened, and I still think about them.”

“Sam said you had a flashback.” He pronounces the word carefully, like he’s not sure what it is.

“Yeah. It was kind of like a bad dream, except I was awake. So I didn’t know it was you, when you came into the kitchen. I thought it was someone else.” Clint sighs. “It’s not an excuse. I shouldn’t have pushed you. And I’m sorry, Nate. I really am. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“It’s okay, Daddy. I forgive you.”

Just like that, easy as breathing. Nothing to it at all. _I forgive you._

Clint slumps against his hotel bed in relief. Not that he really expected Nate to hold a grudge or anything, but it’s still a weight off his soul. “Okay, buddy. Thank you.”

“Are you coming home now?”

“Ah.” Clint rubs his forehead. “Not yet. I gotta…there’s some things I need to do first.”

“When will you come back?”

“I don’t know. I wish I could tell you.” He swaps the phone to his other ear. “But it’s not like the mission, okay? I’m gonna text or call your mom every day, and you can always ask to call me.”

“Will you be home for my birthday?”

Clint checks the date. Nate’s birthday is in a month. “Yeah, bud. I can be home for your birthday. And I’ll bring you a really cool present, okay?”

“Okay!” His voice brightens again, and Clint smiles to himself.

“I need to talk to your mom again, Nate. Can you put her on for me?”

“Yeah. I love you, Daddy.”

“Love you too, kiddo.”

Laura comes back on. After she shoos Nate from wherever she is, she says, “You really think you’ll be here for his birthday?”

“I’m going to try.” He looks at the calendar again. “It’s a month from now.”

“Is that enough time?”

“Sure as hell hope so.” Clint sighs. “Even if it’s not, I’m going to be there. I just told him I would.”

“Good.”

They talk for a few more minutes after that, and Clint promises to call her tomorrow. Then he checks out of the hotel, and catches a bus up to New York City.

* * *

A week later, Bucky catches up with him in a bar in Brighton Beach. Clint is three drinks deep and fielding a fourth, hoping to drink enough to quell the nightmares for the night. He’d had another flashback earlier that day, a bad enough one that he’d had to lock himself in a bathroom until he managed to get himself under control. So he’s drinking again, and counting the days until Nate’s birthday, and wondering how in the hell he’s supposed to pull his fractured pieces back together.

Bucky drops into a barstool next to him with little fanfare. “Evening.”

“If you’re here to tell me it wasn’t my fault,” Clint says, taking a sip, “you’d better be prepared to lose the other arm.”

Bucky snorts. “I’d like to see you try.” He gestures to Clint’s glass. “What’s your poison?” Clint shoves it towards him, and he tries it. “Oh. Actual poison. Okay.”

“I can’t afford the good stuff,” Clint says, laying his head on his arm. “Sue me.”

Bucky waves some money at the bartender, and orders for both of them in flawless Russian. “So,” he says, turning back to Clint. “Your wife says hello, and to text her so she knows you’re alive, otherwise she’s letting the kids break up your antique bows for firewood.”

Clint grunts. “She wouldn’t dare.”

“She would,” Bucky says. “I’m surprised she hasn’t already.”

Clint sighs, but he pulls out the phone and fires off a quick text to Laura. _Still alive._

_Thank you._ A pause, and then: _I love you. Come home soon._

He pockets it again. “So what’s your speech? Come to tell me to go home? Give me some long winded bullshit about not blaming myself?”

“That’s Wilson’s thing. I’m here to drink,” Bucky says, tugging the glass from Clint’s hand, replacing it with a different one. “And make sure you don’t blind yourself on crap vodka.”

“Come on,” Clint says. “You’ve all got an angle. Every goddamn one of you. Self-righteous pricks. None of you know what it was like to be there.”

Bucky takes a drink. “Ah yes,” he says, turning and putting his vibranium arm pointedly on the counter between them. “No one could _possibly_ understand what it was like to be displaced in time and endlessly tortured by Hydra. No else has ever been broken so completely that they forgot who they were. Not a single person on this entire planet has ever been through anything _remotely_ similar. You have the monopoly on all suffering, and we should just bow down to you.”

“You used to be a lot less sarcastic,” Clint says, but he’s grinning all the same.

“I used to be a brainwashed assassin,” Bucky says easily.

Clint snorts out a laugh and takes a drink. “Well. Guess I can’t argue that.”

They sit in silence for a while, sipping their respective drinks. Clint finally feels—not at ease, necessarily, but maybe like something’s loosened in him. Bucky _gets_ it. Gets it in a way Sam or Wanda or Laura never really could. He gets it, and doesn’t offer any cheesy platitudes or annoying quotes. He’s just a steady presence to drink with.

“It sucks,” Bucky says, when his glass is empty.

“Yeah,” Clint agrees. “How’d you deal?”

“Alcohol, mostly.” He grins at Clint, who just shakes his head and downs the rest of his drink before dropping some bills on the bar.

“I’m going to go,” he says to Bucky, but when he goes to stand, the room spins around him. He puts a hand on the bar. “Okay. Or not.”

“Want help?”

“No.” The room spins again. “Yes.”

Between the two of them, they manage to get Clint back down the few blocks to his little apartment. “Nice,” Bucky says, shoving open the door and dropping him onto the couch. “This yours?”

“Rental,” Clint says, his head spinning. “Ugh. I feel _awful_. I’m never drinking again.”

“Gonna feel worse tomorrow,” Bucky says. He pushes a bottle of water at him. “Drink this. All of it.”

“What are you, my mother?” But he pops the cap off anyway. Bucky nods approvingly and gets up, fiddling around with things Clint can’t see.

As soon as the water is gone, Bucky helps Clint into the bathroom, then over to the bed. Clint falls face-first into the pillows and manages to flop himself over so he can see Bucky’s face. It’s nice, he thinks, to have someone look at him like that. Laura is always worried, and Sam and Wanda are always full of pity. Bucky’s just got this vaguely fond expression mixed with a _what-are-we-gonna-do-with-you_ look.

“Hey,” he says. “Do you remember me at all?”

Bucky’s face shutters into blankness, and after a moment he shakes his head. “I don’t think so. It’s hard to say. I get flashes, a lot. Old memories. They don’t really make sense, and I try not to push them.”

“That’s probably for the best,” Clint says.

“I think I might have carried you to a bathroom one time?” His eyes are distant, like he’s trying to see into the past. “I have this really faint impression of you in my arms.”

“Romantic,” Clint says, and Bucky gently whacks him on the shoulder. “Yeah, that happened. You took me to shower. And then I told you your name, and you tried to kill me.”

“Yeah,” Bucky sighs. “That sounds like me.” He drops a blanket on top of Clint. “Sleep.”

Clint burrows under the blanket, aware that he’s going to have a hell of a hangover, but honestly he’s too tired to care. “Thank you,” he mutters into the pillow, not sure if Bucky can hear it or not.

“You’re welcome,” Bucky says quietly, putting a hand on Clint’s shoulder. “Hey. Barton.”

Clint cracks an eye open. “What.”

“It’s not your fault,” he says, and there’s a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

“Go to hell, Barnes,” Clint sighs, but he pats the hand on his shoulder anyway before passing out.

* * *

Predictably, he feels like shit when he wakes up in the morning. Less predictably, Bucky is still there, and he hands Clint another water bottle and some painkillers without comment. “You feel up to breakfast?”

“What is it?”

“What sounds good?”

“Toast?”

So Bucky makes him toast. It’s a little weird, honestly, because the last time he saw Bucky was when he was the Winter Soldier, and he was sending Clint home. The contrast between the stoic Soldier and the relatively happy Bucky is…jarring, to say the least.

“Something on my face, or are you just admiring the view?”

Clint snorts. “Neither,” he says, rolling onto his back. “Just thinking about the last time I saw you.”

“When was that?” Bucky holds up a jar of jam questioningly.

Clint nods at it. “You don’t remember?”

“I told you, I don’t remember a lot. They come back sometimes, but I don’t like to force it.” Bucky hands him a plate. “Hurts less that way.”

“It was at a party,” Clint says, taking it. “Sam and Wanda came to take me back. I was supposed to kill them, but I didn’t. There was a fight, and then you killed your handler, and you told me to go with them.”

“Definitely sounds like me,” Bucky says, looking thoughtful. “But no. I don’t remember. Sorry.”

“It's okay.” Clint takes a couple bites. Bucky watches him for a moment, then goes back into the kitchen and makes his own breakfast. He returns after a moment, dragging a chair behind him. He sits in it and props his feet on the bed.

“So tell me,” Clint says, finishing his first slice. “Honestly. How do you deal with this shit?”

“The memories?”

“Feeling out of place.” He picks up the second piece. “Feeling broken. Like I don’t know how to put myself back together without…”

“Without a handler?”

“Mikhail. Yeah.”

“It’s hard,” Bucky says. “I tried to do it myself, at first. It, uh…it went poorly.” He shakes his head. “There were some…incidents. Slightly more homicidal than yours.”

Clint doesn’t ask for details. “So you couldn’t do it yourself.”

“Fuck, no. You know what kind of shit they put me through? I’m lucky I’m not speaking gibberish in a hospital somewhere.”

Clint snickers at this despite himself. “So how _did_ you get better?”

“It’s still a work in progress,” Bucky says. “I have a lot of bad days.”

“But…”

“But honestly, I started therapy.” At Clint’s eye roll, he says, “I know, I know. I had the same reaction. But you gotta find the right person. It makes a world of difference. I know Wilson means well, but someone neutral is best. He wants to help, but he’s too close to be objective.” He looks distant. “I went off the grid to get mine, actually. She’s been great. I told her about the brainwashing, and HYDRA, and all the shit they did, and she just rolled with it. I saw her three times a week for over a year. I still talk to her—not as much, but still a lot. I can give you her number, if you want.” He leans forward in the chair and meets Clint’s gaze. “I’m serious, Clint. You can’t carry this alone. You have to talk to someone.”

“I _know_ ,” Clint says, dropping his plate. “I’ve been told that. Multiple times.”

“Well, they’re right. I can give you tips to help navigate the flashbacks, but unless you figure out how to deal with the memories, it’s never going to get better.”

Clint considers. “I guess,” he finally says.

“I get it,” Bucky says. “Trust me. You wanna do it on your own. You think you shouldn’t have given in, or should’ve been stronger. You lie awake at night and think about all the ways you fucked up, and you hate what you see when you look in the mirror. You think they broke you for good.”

“Yeah,” Clint admits.

“Well, they didn’t,” Bucky tells him. “You’re still here. Still kicking. You got away.”

“Because of you, and Sam, and Wanda. Not me.”

“It’s not wrong to need help, Clint. You think I just woke up one day and realized HYDRA was brainwashing me? It took me beating Steve half to death before he was able to get to me, and I wasn’t totally free of them until Shuri figured out how to remove the rest of the trigger words. And there were a _lot_ of moments in between those things happening that weren’t so pretty either.” He shrugs. “No one will look down on you for asking for help. _You’re_ the only one who thinks you have to do it alone.”

Clint is quiet for a long time, thinking hard as he twists the sheet between his fingers. “When the hell did you get so smart?”

Bucky grins at him. “I’m a hundred-and-eight years old. Just comes with the territory.” He gets up and takes the dishes. “I’m gonna step out and get some things. Give you some time to think.”

“Thank you,” Clint says, reaching out and catching his wrist. “Seriously. Thank you.”

Bucky nods. “I know what it’s like,” he says. “To lose yourself. Probably better than anyone else. I promise you’re still in there somewhere. You might look a little different, but it’s still you. Just give it some time.” He sets the plates down on the counter and grabs a pencil and some paper, then scribbles something on it. “Here.”

“What’s this?”

“Therapist’s number. Her name’s Savannah White. She’s located in Norway. They’re six hours ahead, but she should be in the office now if you want to call.” Bucky tucks his phone into his pocket and moves towards the door. Then he pauses and says, “You gonna be here when I get back?”

“Probably.” Clint rubs his forehead. “I’m too hungover to run away.”

“I’ll get some Gatorade,” Bucky says, and he leaves.

Clint watches the door close, then stares down at the number in his hand.

He thinks about Laura, then, and his kids. About the Avengers, who risked everything to get him back. About how they’ve all been supporting him in their own way. Trying to help him figure it out.

Bucky is right. He’s the only one who thinks he has to go this alone.

“I do need help,” he finally says out loud. And when he looks up, he sees Mikhail standing by the window, wearing that calm expression that Clint’s never been able to read.

“This is real,” he tells Mikhail. “This is _real_. I got out, you are not here, and I need help.”

“Ah, _ptichka_ ,” Mikhail says, his voice soft and soothing again.

Clint closes his eyes. When he opens them, Mikhail is gone. Not for good, most likely, but it’s the first time Clint’s been able to banish any of his ghosts, and he feels a little lighter for it. He looks down at the number in his hand.

_You have to talk to someone._

He takes a deep breath. “I need help,” he says for the third time, and it feels good to admit it out loud. Even just to the empty room. He listens to the echo of the words die faintly into the silence.

Then he picks up his phone and dials.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sarcastic mostly-recovered Bucky is best Bucky <3 (Also I don't think I'm capable of writing him and Clint without having them flirt at least a little bit, so enjoy your quasi-winterhawk :D)
> 
> I'm on [tumblr!](https://feedmecookiesnow.tumblr.com/)


	57. Chapter 56

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And he is getting better, honestly. There’s still flashbacks, but he’s learning how to cope with them. He knows the warning signs now—the buzzing in his ears, the way his vision suddenly seems to crumble around him. It’s a work in progress to talk himself out of them—more unsuccessful than not—but there is progress. Every session with Dr. White feels like leeching poison out of his soul. Painful, and drawn out, but the sense of relief afterwards is just incredible.

He finds himself in Norway three days later. There was an opening in the therapist’s schedule, and Bucky apparently has enough pull with her that Clint was able to squeeze into that slot. So now he’s outside her office, sitting in an uncomfortable chair next to an uncomfortable super-soldier, and trying to fill out paperwork.

“Stop squirming,” he says to Bucky. “You’re distracting me.”

“Can’t help it,” Bucky says. “Who designed these chairs? They’re so small.”

“You’re too big, that’s what it is.”

“Are you saying I’m fat?”

“Wouldn’t kill you to lay off the carbs, probably.” Clint grins at him, and Bucky makes a face back.

“Best be polite,” he tells Clint, “or you can find your own way home.”

“If you leave me in Norway, my wife will probably kill you. I promised I’d be home for Nate’s birthday.”

“Which is when?”

“Three weeks from tomorrow.”

“Ah.” Bucky gestures at Dr. White’s door. “She does teletherapy, too, you know. So that’s probably doable.”

“You know what teletherapy is?”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I’m old, I’m not totally disconnected.” He elbows Clint. “Finish your homework, it’s almost time.”

“I’m trying to.” Clint fills in the last couple of blanks. “Are you coming in with me?”

“If you desperately need me to,” Bucky says. “But I’d rather not. I like you and all, but I’ve got my own shit to deal with. The last thing I need is your crap piled on top of it.”

Clint snorts and pokes him with the pencil. “You’re so gentle with me.”

“You don’t need gentle. You need someone to whack you upside the head and tell you how it is.”

And that—

Well, that’s true. Laura’s been wonderful, but she tiptoes around him. And Sam and Wanda are great too, but they’ve been keeping their distance, hoping to give him the space he needs. Bucky’s the only one who’s been straightforward with him, other than Natasha, and she’s not really here. Speaking of which—he flips the papers back open and puts a checkmark next to _hearing voices._

“You’re right,” he agrees.

“Usually am.”

“Don’t be smug.” Clint nudges him. “I appreciate it, in any case. I mean, you have all the tact of a bulldozer, but it’s nice.”

“You know, Bucky the Bulldozer was my boxing nickname.”

“What—it was _not_ , don’t pull that crap with me.”

Bucky grins at him. “You’ll never know, will you?”

“You’re _such_ a dick.”

Bucky starts to answer, but then the door to the office opens, and a red-haired woman sticks her head out. “Mr. Barton? She’s ready to see you now.”

Clint gets up, suddenly feeling nervous. He turns to Bucky. “I...”

“I’m not leaving,” Bucky assures him. He pats Clint’s arm. “I’m gonna sit right here and read this very fascinating—” he rummages around on the nearby table ”— _Highlights_ magazine.”

“You know those are for kids, right?”

“I’m young at heart.” Bucky pushes him. “Shoo. Scram. Go.”

Clint laughs, relaxing a little bit. He’s so glad Bucky is here, and being normal, and making all of this easier. “Okay. I’ll see you in an hour.”

The office is very nice. Clint had expected something like SHIELD’s Psych division, where the rooms are all underground and clinical. More like debriefing rooms than psychotherapy rooms. But this is open, and friendly. Cozy without feeling confined. There’s a couch, and a couple comfy chairs opposite it, and a mini fridge in the corner. Sitting in one of them is a woman with curly black hair and glasses. She’s dressed in white pants and a grey shirt that somehow manages to look both very professional and very casual at the same time.

“This is Clint Barton,” the red-haired woman says as she ushers Clint in.

The woman gets up and offers him a hand. “I’m Dr. White,” she says. “Pleasure to meet you.”

“Clint.” He shakes it.

“Feel free to sit anywhere you’d like,” she says, and he sits on the couch. She resumes her place on the chair and smiles at him.

“I don’t really do therapy,” he says before she can say anything. “Like this, I mean. I’ve uh...” He taps his fingers on his knees. “Bucky’s told you about SHIELD, I guess?”

“It’s come up, yes.”

“Yeah.” He huffs out a laugh. “They’d be pissed if they knew I was here. They wanted me to see someone approved.”

Dr. White nods. “I’ve heard that about them. A little uptight.”

“That’s a word for it, yeah.” He shrugs. “Anyway, I’ve had mandatory sessions with them, but I was usually dragged to those under threat of bodily harm so...” Another shrug. “I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know where to start. My last attempt didn’t go so well.”

Dr. White nods. “This is just talking,” she says. “That’s all it is. I have some preliminary things I’d like to know, so I can learn how to best help you. But otherwise, this is just a simple conversation.”

“Should I save my deep dark secrets for a later date, then?”

“We’ll get to those later, yes.” She leans over and opens the mini fridge, then hands him a water. “Sorry, I should’ve led with this.”

“It’s fine.” He toys with the label on it. “So. Talking?”

“Talking.” She leans back, looking very much at ease. “We’re just two strangers right now, you and I. Let’s get to know each other a bit.” She chuckles. “Then we can start in on your deep dark secrets, okay?”

Clint nods. “Okay.” He tugs on the label again, and then says, “Don’t call me Agent Barton. Please. The last guy I was seeing did that, and I kind of threw a water bottle at his head.”

She takes it in stride. “I’ll make sure not to do that, then. What do you want to be called?”

“Just Clint.”

“Okay, Just Clint,” she says, and he can’t hide the way his lips quirk up at the joke. “Anything else I should avoid for the moment?”

“I don’t know.” He yanks the label all the way off the bottle and gestures vaguely to his head. “I’ve got a lot of things messed up in here. I never know what’s gonna set it off.”

“Well, then,” she says, offering him a smile. It’s not condescending, or pitying, or any of the other things he’s gotten used to seeing. It’s just friendly, and he likes her for it. “Let’s see what we can do to un-mess it, yes?”

* * *

He comes out an hour after that, with a schedule clutched tightly in one hand. Dr. White walks him out, and Bucky practically trips over himself to hug her. “Been a while,” she says. “How are you?”

“Great,” he says. “Much better. Noticeable decrease of homicidal incidents.”

Clint gapes at him a little, but Dr. White just laughs and shakes her head. “Barnes,” she says fondly. “Still got that sense of humor, I see.”

They talk for a few minutes while Clint works out payment with the secretary. Technically SHIELD’s footing the bill on this one, which seems only fair, since they’re the reason he got into this whole damn mess in the first place.

When he’s done, Bucky gives Dr. White a hug, and escorts Clint out to the parking lot. “So, what’s the verdict?”

“I like her,” Clint says. “I know it’s only been one time, but I like her. Way better than the guy SHIELD had me seeing.”

“Who was that?”

“Dr. Flynn. I threw a water bottle at his head.”

Bucky laughs. “I remember him. He probably deserved it.”

“It wasn’t on purpose. He called me something and I reacted to it. I feel like I should apologize or something.”

“Nah. He’s a moron, trust me.” Bucky opens the car door. “How often are you seeing Dr. White?”

“Three times a week. Early.”

“How early is early?”

“Seven.”

Bucky makes a face. “Gonna ruin my beauty sleep, I see.”

Clint slides into the car and puts the seat belt on. “You don’t have to come. I’m perfectly capable of driving myself.”

“Yeah, but I promised Laura I’d take you.”

“What? When did you talk to Laura?”

“We text.” Bucky looks over at him, his face serious. “I’m not saying you’re going to react like I did, but I promise you there’s going to be mornings where you won’t want to go. You’re gonna uncover some nasty shit in one session, and then have to talk about it again in the next, and it’s gonna suck. But you’re going, even if I have to carry you to the car myself. You need this.”

Clint snorts. “I’d like to see you try,” he says, but there’s no venom behind it. It’s true, on some level. He does need this. He _wants_ it. It’s painful, but it’s the good kind of pain. Even the things they’d done today—the bare minimum of talking, really—had been cathartic.

“I can and I will,” Bucky tells him, a hint of a smile playing at his mouth.

He starts the car. “So. Where to?”

“What?”

“Do you have anything you want to do?”

“I...” Clint thinks. He’s been to Norway before, but never to Oslo, and certainly never to sightsee. “I don’t know.”

“How do you normally occupy yourself?”

“Drinking,” Clint says honestly. “But I think I should stop that.”

“Probably.” Bucky puts the car in drive. “There’s a Viking ship museum. Want to see it?”

Clint laughs. “I never took you for a museum guy.”

“Everyone likes Viking ships. They’re cool. Always makes me want to go conquer and pillage things.”

“You’re so goddamn weird,” Clint says. “But sure. Viking ships. Why not?”

“Works for me.”

He pulls out of the parking lot. They’re quiet for a while, Clint more focused on the scenery than anything else. The clinic is a little ways out of the city, and views out here are just _astounding_.

“I wanted to say thank you,” Bucky suddenly blurts out. He’s staring straight ahead, hands clenched on the steering wheel.

Clint looks at him, then waves a hand. “I think I should be thanking you, Buck. You don’t have to do all this.”

“Not about this.” Bucky takes a deep breath. “I had a memory, last night. Of you telling me my name.” He rubs his forehead. “And some stuff about Steve, I think. It’s hazy.”

“Yeah. The night before I left. We talked in the plane.”

Bucky nods. “Well. Thank you for that. I think it helped. Knowing that I was gonna get out at some point. Gave me something to hold onto.”

Clint swallows, unsure what to say. He finally settles on, “Happy to help.”

“That’s partially why I’m here,” he continues. “I mean, I like you and all. I wanted to help. But also...” He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “I owe you? Or something like that.”

“You don’t owe me shit,” Clint tells him. “I’m serious. All I did was give you some words.”

“You don’t understand.” Bucky pulls over suddenly, putting the car in park so he can face Clint. “They might have just been words to you, but they were a lifeline to me. I mean it. I don’t think I would be here—” he gestures around to the car, and the world outside “—if you hadn’t done that. It was the start of something. I never remembered everything, and I lost some words along the way, but when Steve said what he said in the helicarrier...” He trails off, then says, “It made _sense_. It fit with the words I already knew.”

“I’m sorry,” Clint says. “I didn’t mean to trivialize it.” He reaches out and pries his left hand off the steering wheel, where it’s starting to dent it. “Easy.”

“Shit.” Bucky runs his hands over the indents and scowls. “You’re not, anyway. It’s just hard to explain.” He taps his thumb on the dent and sighs. “I was still in there, sometimes. If they left me out long enough. I could break past the Asset and come out. They’d call it unstable and wipe me again, but sometimes I could still hold onto things. And the things you told me? I held on to those as long as I could. They had to do a hard burn to get rid of Steve again, and they didn’t really manage it. Clearly.”

Bucky looks at him, a dark sadness in his eyes. “It sucked. It all sucked. Seventy years is a long time. But you helped a lot. So thank you. For that. For giving me...me.”

There are tears in Clint’s eyes, and he’s not entirely sure what to do about that. He wipes them on his sleeve. “Happy to help,” he says.

Bucky nods and swipes at his own eyes. “Told you,” he says, the lighthearted tone coming back into his voice. “I got my own shit to deal with.”

“Don’t we all,” Clint sighs. He nudges Bucky’s arm with a slight smile. “Come on. Enough of the blubbering. I wanna see some Viking ships. Try not to break our car before we get there, yeah?”

“Asshole,” Bucky says, but he grins anyway and pulls back out onto the road.

* * *

It’s a slow process, therapy. Not that Clint expected anything different, but it’s frustrating at points. He just wants to get _better_ , and stop freaking out—

“It’s not freaking out,” Dr. White says as she leans back in her chair. “It’s post-traumatic stress, Clint. We talked about that on Tuesday, remember?”

“I know. I just—” He scowls down at his hands. “It’s stupid shit, you know? We were playing a card game last night. Just a regular card game. And I went to reach for one, and Bucky got there first. And he—”

He cuts off and gets up, too agitated to sit still. Dr. White just pulls her chair back, giving him room to pace. “He what?” she asks calmly.

“He said ‘you gotta be quicker than that.’” Clint rubs a hand over his face, hard, like he’s trying to shove the memory back in his head. “That’s it. A normal thing that normal people say, and then _boom_ , flashback.” He drops back onto the couch and buries his head in his hands. “I told you, it’s stupid. And I punched him, too. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“It’s not stupid, Clint. PTSD can affect a lot of things in your life, and sometimes it’s the smaller things that hit hardest.” She leans forward. “Why that phrase in particular?”

He stares at his shoes. “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

She’s not pushy with him, but she doesn’t let him hide, either. It’s like a mix of Natasha and Laura, in a way. He’s not sure if he likes it, but he knows he needs it. “It’s something they used to say to me. Not that, exactly. But close.”

“They being Mikhail and Lukas?”

“Yeah.” Clint shudders a little. “They would—if I didn’t do something they wanted fast enough—” He stops again, shakes his head. “Why is it so hard to tell you this?”

“Because it was extremely traumatic,” she says quietly. “And you’ve been keeping it to yourself for a long time. It’s hard to let go when you’ve been holding on tight with both hands.”

“Didn’t have a choice.”

“Now you do.” She reaches out, gently pulling his hands away from his face. “What was it about that phrase, Clint?”

“It was just—” He gets up again, then sits back down. “I don’t want to.”

After a moment, she nods. “Would you like to take a walk?”

“A what?”

“A walk.” She gets up.

“Is that allowed?”

Dr. White laughs and picks up her jacket. “This isn’t jail, Clint. We can go outside. And I think it would be easier for you.” She nods at the couch. “This can be too intimate, sometimes. I want you to be comfortable.”

“A walk would be _great_ ,” Clint says with feeling, and that’s how they find themselves outside. There’s a little garden out here, and a small path leading around it. Not super long, but enough that he can stretch out a bit beyond the ten paces in her office. He starts walking, feeling some of the tension bleed out from under his skin.

“You’re going to have to slow down a bit,” Dr. White says, practically jogging to keep up. “Your legs are a lot longer than mine.”

“Sorry,” Clint says, forcing himself to back off a bit. “I’m a little keyed up.”

“Understandable.” She looks around the path, then asks, “Do you want to run a lap?”

“Do I—” Clint looks around it. It can’t be any more than a quarter of a mile, but it suddenly looks very appealing for some reason. “Yeah, actually. Is that okay?”

Dr. White gestures to the bench nearby. “I’ll wait here,” she says, sitting on it. “I’ll do some notes. Run as much as you need.”

He does. He feels a little stupid doing it, but once he skids to a halt in front of her again, it’s exchanged for a feeling of lightness. “Huh,” he says, dropping onto the bench next to her. “That was...weirdly helpful.”

“Exercise does that,” she says. “Elevates your mood, and helps reduce anxiety. It’s a good coping mechanism. Have you been exercising at all?”

“Not really.” He shrugs. “I’m not really the running type, unless I have to.”

“Doesn’t have to be running. It can be anything you want, as long as you’re moving. Tap dancing, rowing, biking...” She shrugs. “Whatever floats your boat.”

Clint snorts. “Tap dancing?”

“Not your thing?” Dr. White gently bumps her elbow against him as she tucks her tablet back into her jacket.

“Definitely not.”

They’re quiet for a long time after that, just watching the sun drift over the garden. Then Clint says, “They used to hurt me. When I made them wait. Or killed people.”

Dr. White doesn’t say anything. Just nods and waits for him to continue.

“There was one time. They kept me awake for days. Shot me up with hallucinogens, and made me see things, and beat me. It, uh...it sucked.”

Another nod.

“SHIELD sent people after me. HYDRA picked them up. And Lukas threatened to shoot them, unless I gave them what they wanted. So I did. And then he shot them anyway.” He clenches his fists on his thighs, and adds, “Then he said it, after. _Next time, don’t make me wait._ ”

He swallows hard, feeling like he’s run a mile rather than just a lap around a garden. His breathing is coming in gasps, and the flowers in front of him seem to warp and move and—

Dr. White’s hands wrap firmly into his, and she slides off the bench to kneel in front of him. “Look at me,” she says, voice firm, and he does. “One.”

“One,” he repeats.

“Two.”

“Two.”

It’s like being with Natasha again, down to the grip on his hands and the quiet way she’s counting. They count to ten, and when his breathing still is irregular, they do it again.

After the second round, he pries his own fingers off hers and slumps back onto the bench. “Fuck. _Fuck_.”

“Deep breaths,” she says, not moving. Her eyes are on him, but there’s no pity in them. Just quiet concern. “Like we’ve been practicing.”

He does, and takes the water bottle she presses into his hands. He’s not sure how long it takes, but eventually, he manages to calm himself into some semblance of normalcy.

“It was my fault,” he says, once his heart isn’t pounding so hard. “I was warned of the consequences. What happened after that was my fault.”

“It was _not_ your fault,” Dr. White says, more fiercely than he would have expected. She moves to sit next to him again. “You held on much longer than anyone ever had a right to expect, in the face of insurmountable odds.”

“But they _died_ —“

“Because _Lukas_ killed them,” she says. “Not you.”

“But if I hadn’t—”

“What more could you have done, Clint?” She gently covers his clenched fist. “Think about it. I want you to take a long, honest look at what happened, and then I want you to tell me if there was truly anything else you could have done to stop him.”

“I...” he thinks about it. Examines the moment from every angle. He couldn’t have given in. Yes, they got what they wanted in the end, but back then he didn’t know what the future held—no pun intended—so he’d _had_ to keep going. Had to hold on as long as he could.

_Could’ve gone until they killed you_ , he thinks—but no, that wasn’t really an option either. He had to stay alive for Laura and the kids. And honestly, he’s not sure Mikhail would have _let_ him die.

“No,” he eventually says. “No. There wasn’t.”

And it _hurts_ , to admit that, like a knife to the chest. People died because of _him_ , trying to find or help _him_ , and it kills him to admit that there was nothing he could have done to stop it. To stop any of it.

“That’s what I’m saying,” she says softly. “Clint, you did everything you could to protect the world, and the future. The things that happened were done _to_ you, not because of you, and it is _not_ your fault.”

Clint stares at the ground. “I know,” he says after a while. He points to his head. “In here. I know what you mean. I...I understand it.” He points at his chest. “But I don’t know if I _believe_ it. In here.”

“I would be surprised if you did,” Dr. White tells him. “Considering Mikhail and Lukas spent the better part of a year convincing you otherwise, and they had the ability to twist the circumstances and the environment to their discretion. When someone is alone, and isolated, and in pain, it’s easy enough to convince them of almost anything. They could have told you the sky was orange, and the sun rises in the west, and you would have believed them.”

“Because I was weak,” he mutters, looking down.

“Because you had no choice,” she corrects. “A person can only take so much, Clint, and even the strongest break under the right pressure.”

He nods shakily. “Okay.”

“You don’t have to believe any of this right away,” she continues. “But it’s important that you hear it. When your thoughts start to spiral in that direction, I want you to keep that in mind. You did everything you could have done. It’s _not_ your fault.”

“It’s not my fault,” he repeats, and hates how the words feel wrong on his tongue. He says them again anyway. Then he tries for a smile and says, “Sam would be so proud of me right now.”

Dr. White laughs and leans back against the bench. “From what you’ve told me of him, I would agree with that.”

Clint looks up at the blue sky. “I did kill some of them,” he says. “Directly. There were the agents in the car, that first time Wanda came for me. And the people on the range when I was—” He stops.

“When you...” Dr. White prompts.

“Training. They set people out for me and made me kill—” He cuts off again. “I didn’t want to. The first time, it was one of the guys who...you know.” He makes a vague gesture. “I hated him. I wanted him dead. I wanted to kill him myself. Then they put him on the range, and gave me a bow, and I refused.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t want to be their executioner. I wanted him dead on my terms.”

“And what happened, when you refused?”

_“This is your target. Kill him.”_

Clint winces as a phantom bullet tears through his knee, and his hand, and his leg, and all the other places he was shot. “Mikhail shot me. He dragged me back and every time I said no, he shot me again. And then when I finally did it, he shot me again anyway. Because I made him wait.”

Dr. White reaches out, gently unclenching his fist. Clint stares at the palm of his hand as little drops of blood well up from where his nails dug in. “I’ll ask you the same question. Is there anything that you could have done to change the outcome?”

“No.” Clint shakes his head. “He would’ve just kept doing it. Over and over until I said yes. Which is exactly what he did.”

“So there you go,” she says. “You had a gun to your head, and you made the only choice you really could. There is only so much pressure one person can take, Clint. It’s not wrong or weak to have a breaking point, and to be perfectly honest, you reached yours a _lot_ later than most people would have.”

She has a point, he concedes. It’s everything that his friends have been saying. It’s everything he _knows_ , too. Hell, he’s been on the other side of the table. He knows exactly what torture can be designed to do.

Still.

“I still feel like shit,” he says. “About them. The people who died.” He closes his eyes, hears the crack of a gun. “There were so many of them.”

“You’re allowed to grieve, Clint.”

“I feel like I shouldn’t, though?” His voice turns it into a question. “I mean, I know it’s fucked up to think that. But I feel like it’s wrong.”

“Why is it wrong?”

“I shouldn’t get to feel sorry for myself when they’re the ones who are dead.”

She’s quiet for a moment. “Why not?”

“Because they’re—” He stops. “I don’t know.”

“You have a right to your own pain,” she tells him. “Just because other people might have it worse, or might not be around to feel theirs anymore, that doesn’t make your own feelings any less valid or important.”

Clint kicks at the ground. “See, that sounds all nice and reasonable. But I just don’t know if I believe that either.”

“Again, I would be surprised if you did. This takes time, Clint. You’re not going to wake up tomorrow morning and suddenly be alright. As much as you and I would both like that to happen.”

“Sucks,” he says.

“It does.”

Clint kicks the ground again, then says, “There was a kid, too. I got away once, and hid in a village. A mom and her kids helped me. Mikhail killed him for it. The kid.” He swallows. “Guess I shouldn’t feel bad about that either?”

Dr. White shakes her head. “We just established you’re allowed to grieve, Clint. What you shouldn’t do is blame yourself. Those are two different things.”

“I...” He rubs a hand through his hair and winces. “It _hurts_.”

“It’s going to. There’s nothing you can do to avoid that, unfortunately.”

“How am I supposed to live with it?”

“We’ll work on that part,” she says, putting her hand over his. “But for now...let’s start with letting yourself _feel_ it.”

Clint looks out at the garden again. A few feet from him, a butterfly lands on a flower, flapping to stay balanced. _Lila would like that,_ he thinks, watching it. _She likes butterflies._

“Okay,” he says quietly. “I...I’ll try.”

Dr. White pats his hand. “That’s all I ask.”

* * *

Bucky is waiting for him by the car. He flips up his sunglasses as Clint walks up. “You look like shit,” he says.

“I feel like shit,” he says, then reconsiders. “Well, no. Yes. Maybe a bit. It feels...”

“Feels like your brain ran a marathon?”

“That’s...yeah. That’s about it.”

Bucky nods and opens the car door for him. “I have the cure for that.”

The cure, apparently, is something called _sodd_. It’s some kind of stew that comes with flatbread. It’s fucking amazing, and Clint decides right then and there he wants to eat it every day for the rest of his life.

“Told you so,” Bucky says, grinning at the look on his face.

“Yeah, yeah. You’re always right.”

“Damn straight.”

They eat in silence for a while, just enjoying the food and the view. Clint thinks about what Dr. White had said, turning over the session in his mind.

“Hey,” Clint says eventually, and Bucky looks up. “Sorry about yesterday.”

“Shit happens. No big deal.”

“I punched you in the _face_ , and that’s not a big deal?”

“Nah. It was a good hit, anyway. You should be proud.” He shrugs. “I’ll watch what I say next time.”

“No, that’s—” Clint stirs his bowl, then says, “I don’t need you to tiptoe around me, remember? I hate that.”

Bucky studies him. “Okay,” he says after a moment. In the blink of an eye, he leans forward and steals the other half of Clint’s flatbread.

“Hey!” Clint protests, reaching for it, but Bucky pulls it away. “That’s mine, give it back!”

“Next time, be faster,” he says with a smirk. But his eyes are watching Clint intently, and Clint—

Doesn’t have a flashback, for once. Doesn’t hear Mikhail’s voice, or Lukas’s, or feel a flash of pain as a phantom bullet tears through him. He just sees Bucky, sitting there expectantly, waiting for what comes next.

He reaches out, quick as lightning, and yanks it back. “Give it back, jerk.”

Bucky snorts. “Guess you’re over that, then?”

“Guess so,” Clint says, doing his best to scowl despite the urge to jump up and cheer at the thought. “Or at least if I punch you, it won’t be because of that.”

“That’s my boy.”

“Fuck off,” Clint says, rolling his eyes even as he hides a smile.

“I think you mean _sodd_ off,” Bucky says, and flicks his spoon at him.

There’s a moment where they both look at each other, dead silence between them. Then Clint is laughing, laughing so hard he can barely breathe. Bucky is laughing too, and for one shining moment, Clint feels like his old self again.

“I don’t know why I keep you around,” he says, once he can wheeze in enough air to form words.

“Lots of reasons,” Bucky says, leaning back in his chair. “Bad puns being only one of them.” He tears off a piece of his own bread and stuffs it in his mouth.

“Charming,” Clint says dryly, eating his own.

It’s afternoon by the time they get back to the car. The meal was over before noon, but then Bucky had found a trail behind the restaurant, and there’d been an impromptu hike. Nothing strenuous, but it was nice to walk around for a bit rather than sit and brood.

“You’re getting there,” Bucky says, reaching for the ignition. “If a couple punches to the face is what it takes to help you, I’m really okay with it. You ain’t getting rid of me that easy.”

Clint looks at him. “Well, I’ll try not to do it again,” he says. “But in any case...thanks.”

“No problem,” Bucky says, and he pulls out of the parking lot.

* * *

“Question,” Clint says to Dr. White a few sessions later. “Is it weird that I want to see him? Mikhail, I mean.”

“Not at all,” she says, brushing a tree branch out of her face.

They’re outside again, walking around the garden. Clint prefers it to her office. It’s nice in there, but she was right about the intimacy of the set-up. He finds it significantly easier to talk about the shit that happened to him when he’s able to walk it off afterwards.

“I just feel like it’s weird,” he says. “Stockholm syndrome-y, you know? Like objectively, I’m aware he’s a bad guy who did bad things. But in my head...”

“There was a high degree of emotional dependence,” she says. “He twisted and manipulated the situation until he was the one person you could consistently depend on, and then he twisted it further to make that dependence seem reasonable. You’re naturally more subservient to authority figures, and he took great advantage of that.”

“Uh, I think my SHIELD files would highly disagree with that,” he informs her. “The words ‘doesn’t do well with authority’ are practically embossed on the front page.”

“It takes the _right_ authority. What about Agent Coulson? Agent Fury? Captain America?”

Clint thinks for a moment. “Yeah, okay. That’s a point.”

“It’s not necessarily a bad thing, Clint. You’re a very loyal person at your core. That’s a good quality to have. Mikhail twisted it into something else.”

He reaches out and brushes a flower as he walks past. “I did trust him. Sort of. I knew it was wrong, but I did anyway.”

“He didn’t leave you with any other choice. You had to trust him, or you weren’t going to survive.”

_I’m not sure I did survive, sometimes._

“But to respond to your question,” she says, “the answer is no. It’s not weird.”

Clint kicks a pebble down the path. “I really want to see him again.”

“That’s to be expected. You left under some tense circumstances, and you didn’t get to say goodbye.”

“I’m not a kid,” he scoffs. “I don’t need to say _goodbye_ to him.”

“I mean there was no closure. You left, and that was it. And your separation is more permanent than most.”

He kicks another pebble. “Not entirely.”

Dr. White raises an eyebrow at him. “Not entirely?”

“They’re still looking for him,” Clint says. “That’s what Sam said. They’re still trying to find him. If they do...” He swallows roughly. “I was going to ask if I could talk to him.”

“Is that what you want to do?”

He shrugs. “There are some things I want to ask him. Things he said that I want to clarify. I think it would help.” He looks at her. “You gonna tell me it’s a bad idea?”

“Would you listen if I did?”

“Yeah.” He tries for a smile. “You’re smarter than me. If you think it’s not a good plan...”

Dr. White is quiet for a moment. Finally she says, “I’m not sure I can encourage it at this point in your healing process. Normally, I would advise that you put some more time between the two of you. But your case is a little different, with the time travel and all. I’m aware that you have limited chances to get the closure you’re looking for.”

She turns to face him. “If you do go, then I’d suggest you take a support team. Your wife, or your friends. People who are aware of how you’re progressing here.”

“I wasn’t planning on going alone.”

“Good.”

They walk a little more. Then Dr. White asks, “What do you want to say to him?”

“I’m not totally sure,” Clint admits. “I keep thinking of things, but then...I don’t know. They don’t sound right. In my head.”

“Well,” she says, pushing another tree branch out of her way. “Why don’t we start making a list?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, holding it up for her. “Okay. That might help.” He rubs a hand over his face, then says, “So here’s what I was thinking...”

* * *

“Hey, Clint. Got your message. What’s up?”

“Hi, Sam.” Clint leans against the window, looking out at the setting sun. “I need you to do me a favor.”

“Anything, man.”

Clint nods. “You’re still looking for Mikhail, right?”

“Yeah, we are.”

“When you find him, I need you to tell me.” Clint puts his head against the glass. “I want to see him again.”

There’s a short silence. Then Sam says, “Are you sure that’s the best idea?”

“I’m talking with my therapist about it. It’s not just some random thing.” He closes his eyes. “Please, Sam. This is really important to me. I need to see him again. I don’t...”

“Clint—”

“I’m not sure I can move on without it, Sam. Please.”

Another silence. Finally, “Okay.”

“You promise?”

“Yeah, Clint. As soon as we find him, you’ll be the first to know. I promise.”

Clint lets out a relieved breath. “ _Thank_ you, Sam. Thank you.”

“You know you’re gonna have to travel to see him. We’re not bringing him here.”

“I know,” Clint says, ignoring the sick feeling in his stomach at the thought. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Just keep me updated, okay?”

“Will do.”

* * *

“I had a thought,” Clint tells Laura on their nightly phone call.

Well. Nightly for her, anyway. Ass o’clock in the morning for him. But they’ve tried a few different ways, and this seems to be the only one that really works. 

“A thought, huh?”

“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “I’m doing really well here.”

“I know. Bucky sends me updates.”

“Ha. I _knew_ he was just a gossipy old man.”

“What’s your thought, love?”

Clint looks out the window at the distant mountains. “I’m still planning on coming home for Nate’s birthday party next week,” he says. “But after that...I was wondering if you guys would like to come back here. With me.”

Laura’s quiet, and he rushes to fill in the questions he knows she’ll have. “I’ve been talking with a couple people at SHIELD,” he says. “Some of the decent ones. There’s a few places we could live here, and we can enroll the kids in school once fall comes around. It’ll be like a semester abroad, you know? And the schools are great here. Probably better than what they’re getting at home anyway.”

She’s quiet for a long time. Then she says, “I thought the goal was to come home.”

“It is,” he assures her. “And I can. If that’s what you need. But being here, in _person_...it’s helping me. I’m getting a lot better.”

And he is, honestly. There’s still flashbacks, but he’s learning how to cope with them. He knows the warning signs now—the buzzing in his ears, the way his vision suddenly seems to crumble around him. It’s a work in progress to talk himself out of them—more unsuccessful than not—but there _is_ progress. Every session with Dr. White feels like leeching poison out of his soul. Painful, and drawn out, but the sense of relief afterwards is just _incredible_.

“I just miss you guys,” he says. “I miss you, and the kids, and I’m—” He stops, then says, “I want to be with you. We wouldn’t have to stay forever. Just...just for awhile. Just long enough for me to manage my own shit. Or at least get to a point where I don’t have to crack my head open three times a week, you know?”

Laura snorts quietly. “Okay,” she says. “Counterpoint: let’s start with a visit. I take the kids and we come stay with you for a week or so. The kids get to explore a different country, I get to see you. _Then_ we can decide if we want to stay.” Her voice takes on a pleading tone. “It’s not that I don’t love you, Clint. You know I do. I’d climb through this phone to get to you. But they’ve got their own lives here, and I don’t want to just uproot them and cart them over to Norway for a semester without them agreeing to it.”

“Okay,” Clint says after a moment. “That’s a fair point. I guess I didn’t think of that.”

“I’m sure they’ll say yes,” she says. “But let’s give them a chance to make their own decisions.”

“Yes, ma’am. You’re the boss.”

“Damn right,” she says, and he can hear the smile in her voice. “Love you, Clint.”

“Love you too.”

* * *

Clint rearranges his schedule with Dr. White, and Bucky “requisitions” a Quinjet from the SHIELD outpost in Finland. They fly back to Missouri the night before Nate’s birthday, landing at midnight. Clint pulls Laura into his arms as soon as he sees her, and doesn’t let go of her until the next morning.

Nate’s party is a success, full of cake and presents and screaming children. It’s loud, and messy, and he loves every second of it. Loves how _normal_ it feels to stand there and watch the kids play. To Clint’s everlasting delight, they all immediately take a liking to Bucky, who looks extremely uncomfortable with the whole situation.

“Help me,” he says to Clint, trying to shake off one of the kids clinging to his leg. Another jumps onto his back, and he winces. “Please.”

“You’re a tough guy,” Clint says with a straight face. “I’m sure you can manage.”

Bucky glares at him. Laura takes pity after a moment, and bribes the kids off with the promise of more cake. Clint laughs and goes to supervise the opening of presents.

Later that night, he and Laura present the idea of visiting Norway to the kids. They jump on it immediately. He figured they would, but it’s still nice to hear them get excited about it.

He says as much to Laura that night, and she nods. “They love their dad,” she says. “They just want to be with you, no matter where you are.”

“I know.”

“They missed you.” She wraps her arms around him. “We all did.”

“Missed you too,” he says, kissing her forehead. “So much.”

* * *

A month later, Clint is splitting wood out behind the house in Norway. They don’t really need any more wood, but he likes the exercise of it. Like most things, Dr. White had been right about that too. He likes how it clears his mind. Makes it easier to think. He especially likes it for after flashbacks; the repetition of the movement helps ground him back into reality.

He’s getting ready to split another piece when there’s a small noise behind him. Clint turns, expecting to see Bucky. “I’m almost done,” he says, but then the shadow emerges from the house, and Clint realizes it’s Sam. “Oh, hey. I didn’t know you were coming.”

Sam doesn’t say anything. Just looks at him with an expression that Clint can’t quite read. He drops the axe and takes a step towards him. “Hey. Everything okay?”

“I need to talk to you,” Sam finally says.

“Sure. What’s going on?”

He’s carrying the shield, Clint realizes. Steve’s shield. It’s strapped to his arm, just like Steve used to have it. It looks natural on him, like he was always meant to have it there.

“Just say it,” Clint says, getting worried. He looks back up at Sam’s face. “You’re freaking me out a bit here. Is it Laura? Something wrong with the kids?”

“They’re fine,” Sam assures him. “Everyone’s fine.”

“Then _what?_ ”

Sam takes a deep breath. “I’m just keeping a promise,” he says.

Understanding jolts through Clint like lightning. “Oh,” he says, and his knees suddenly wobble. He reaches out to grip the edge of the stump he’s been splitting wood on, and leans on it. “Oh,” he says again. The world seems to tilt around him. He closes his eyes and forces himself to breathe, to anchor himself back to this point.

When he’s got himself under control, he opens his eyes and looks up at Sam. “You found him?”

“Yeah,” Sam confirms, his expression solemn. “We found him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for how long this took, I was doing a lot of research and reading to try and get this as authentic as I can, having never really been to therapy myself. 8 million thanks to [clintscoffeepot](https://clintscoffeepot.tumblr.com/) for the beta/read through, you're awesome and you deserve all the nice things.
> 
> I'm on [tumblr!](https://feedmecookiesnow.tumblr.com/)


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